


Untitled (Work in Progress)

by downtherabbithole90



Category: Newsies (1992), Newsies - All Media Types, Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Eating Disorders, F/M, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Multi, Original Character(s), Other, Past Relationship(s), Realistic, Relationship(s), Unplanned Pregnancy, Victorian
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-27
Updated: 2019-08-20
Packaged: 2020-02-07 12:22:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 9
Words: 27,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18620548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/downtherabbithole90/pseuds/downtherabbithole90
Summary: Racetrack Higgins and his long-time girlfriend, Fiona, are about to age out of the Lodging House. They've begun making plans for their new life, but things aren't looking as perfect as they'd always planned...This work focuses a lot on the memories of the two characters, so it is a bit literary in nature and a way to challenge myself to make something about memory readable. It's a full-on work in progress, so expect changes. Critiques are welcome. :)





	1. Promises

**Author's Note:**

> This is just a first draft of a story that's been floating through my mind for a couple of decades now (yikes). Any constructive critiques are absolutely welcome. 
> 
> For those wondering, the characters are mostly based on the 1992 film. I've seen the musical, but haven't retained much about it...so any character descriptions are based on that the film version.
> 
> I'm also trying to be at least more or less historically accurate, so please point out any inconsistencies.

**1902**

Fiona O’Connor moved her blonde hair out of her face as she ran to the girls’ toilets. She pushed past a few of the younger girls, Miriam and Ruth, who were admiring a bright green ribbon Mary had saved up a weekto purchase.

Fiona could hear snippets of their conversation as she whizzed past.

“I think I’d like to wear my hair like this,” Miriam said, sweeping her curly brown hair up halfway, twisting the end of the ponytail. “It’s a bit more grown up, don’t you think?”

Ruth nodded, the jealousy on her face palpable. A few minutes earlier, Fiona had silently bet the ribbon would “go missing” in the next day or two and turn up mysteriously in Ruth’s drawer.

“Fi?” Miriam asked, spinning on her heel as she watched her friend run to the toilets.

But Fiona didn’t answer. She barely had time to slam the door behind her before the contents of her undigested lunch made its way into the toilet.

“Fi?” Miriam asked again, her footsteps tentatively coming closer to the stall. “You okay?”

“Yes….” Fi eeked out weakly. But Miriam wasn’t convinced.

“This is the third time this week you’ve come back to the Lodging House for lunch with us and, well, not kept it down. You want to see a doctor?”

Fiona let the question hang in the air as she stood up, regaining her balance by leaning onto the wooden wall for a moment. She took a deep breath.

 _I can’t even throw up in privacy, s_ he thought, wiping the tears that had involuntarily fallen from her eyes while her lunch reappeared. She silently kicked the wall in protest before shifting her weight to both of her feet.

“Thanks, girls, I’m fine.” Fi answered, a smile in her voice.

Miriam and Ruth were both almost 14, an age that seemed a lifetime away for Fiona. She would be 18 that July, a woman. About to age out of the Lodging House.

Of course there were no strict rules that said you had to leave when you turned 18, but it was rare to hang on past then. 20 was the absolute maximum. No one bought newspapers from bonafide adults, no matter how they tried to spin it.

And no adult could live on that paltry amount of money.

“Want us to get Race?” Ruth asked.

Racetrack Higgins. Fiona’s boyfriend, and almost literally her other half. The pair had been inseparable since they were 12, with their daily card games and banter suddenly giving way to stolen glances, and then hungry kisses.

He was the one everyone called when Fiona was in trouble, and vice versa. They had woken her up in the middle of the night five months ago when he’d run his mouth a little too far at Sheepshead Bay and he came home with a broken arm and a bloody ear. She had thrown on her robe, running out to the street in the middle of the night, where he pathetically looked at her, his eyes admitting this had been halfway his fault.

Wordlessly, she had sat up with him the entire night, trying to make sense of his drunken blather that went back and forth from declaring his love for her, telling her he wanted to undress her and then angrily recounting the story of what happened at Sheepshead all over again.

Before Fiona had met Race, her father beat her mother viciously. And she knew if you got hit in the head, you couldn’t let someone sleep it off. So she had stayed awake with him all night, the world bleary the next morning as she stepped out to sell her papers.

Was it Race’s arm started feeling better that this had happened? She tried to bat away the thought.

“No,” Fiona shook her head. “I’ll see him tonight anyway.”

“This is happening an awful lot, Fi,” Ruth protested. “He said he was going to 14th street today. I can go get him if-“

“No,” Fi protested.

Besides, he was probably at Sheepshead anyway, “dipping in” to the money he was saving for after he left the Lodging House. He hadn’t formally proposed to Fiona, but one night, showed her his secret, as though he were showing her a treasure chest.

He opened his drawer, and when he was sure no one else was around, he pulled out a sock with a metal cigarette holder buried deep in it.

“This is for us, for one day,” he told her.

She blushed, looking over her shoulder at the scuffling behind her, worried that someone would come in and catch her where she was expressly forbidden: the boys’ floor.

“I’m going to buy you a house outside of the city. And it’ll be quiet, like church mice quiet. And we can sleep in the same bed. And we can eat whatever we like. And there won’t be no line for the toilet, or the sink, or kids runnin’ around when we wanna be alone,” he told her, grabbing her by the waist.

He pulled her close to him, inhaling the faint lavender scent on her hair.

“Does that sound nice?”

Fiona nodded, a smile breaking out on her lips.

“Yes.”

But now, she wondered how much he’d “dipped into” because he was sure his next bet would win.

“It’s an investment,” he argued. “You gotta win sometime, don’t you?”

They had called him Racetrack because of his love of watching the races out in Brooklyn. It had been fun to watch his eyes light up when he described his heart pounding as the horses galloped in front of him. He’d even taken her twice.

But how would they afford that quiet as church mice house if he couldn’t stop betting on them?

“I’ll just see Race tonight,” Fiona echoed, her voice carrying over the stalls.

The girls sounded as if they were considering it, but then conceded.

“Okay,” the called, their footsteps moving closer to the exit. “Let us know if you need us to get him later.”

Fiona nodded, even though she knew they couldn’t see her. She moved her hand over her belly, not even allowing herself to think about the possibility…

So what if her skirt felt tighter? She was just due for her period…that had to be it.

When she was sure the girls were gone, she made her way to the pump, pushing its metal handle up and down a few times before cold water spurted out. She ran her hand underneath the tap and splashed her face.

She took a deep breath and made her way toward the stairwell, so she could finish her lunch and then set out with her best friend, Katarina, again. She was already dreading the afternoon shift when the sun climbed high in the sky and all she wanted was to succumb to a delicious sleep.

But as she turned the corner, an icy cold hand grabbed her shoulder.

Fiona put her hand to her mouth, muffling the scream that wanted to come out. But it was only Agnes, one of the oldest girls at the Lodging House. Agnes was always sickly, her reddish hair stringy and her skin such a ghostly white pallor. She was by far the oldest in the Lodging House, no one knowing her exact age, but she hadn’t made plans to leave.

Aside from that, Agnes wasn’t like everyone else, anyway. She would often have extended conversations with people who weren’t there, or even tell people that she’d seen a future spectre of them and that the future version of themselves wanted the current version to know something.

It was always something really odd, like the time she told Racetrack the future Racetrack Higgins had told her not to put pepper on his potatoes that evening because it would make him have a sneezing fit thought could bring on tuberculosis.

Where would someone like Agnes even go without a family? After that Nelly Bly expose just a few years ago, no one would dare hand anyone over to a madhouse if they truly cared about them.

Kloppman had decided it was better she was here than there. As long as she didn’t hurt anyone. And thus far, the most violent she ever got was throwing an apple at one of her two faceless, dirty dolls, claiming the littlest one had been ungrateful for the fruit and sobbing all evening.

“You frightened me,” Fiona put a hand to her chest.

“Fiona, I have something important to tell you,” Agnes told the young woman, lowering her face to hers. Fiona thought she could smell a hint of fish on her breath.

“Sure,” Fiona forced a smile, suddenly conscious of that fact that she had just thrown up and her own breath probably smelled equally as bitter.

“Are you ready?” Agnes asked, putting her hand on Fiona’s other shoulder so that she stood were square in front of Agnes.

Fiona nodded, hopeful that whatever buffoonery came out of her mouth might distract her for a minute.

“Okay, well. I have to tell you that you’re going to have a baby,” Agnes nodded. “I won’t tell anyone. Jesus wants me to tell you.”

“That’s nonsense,” Fiona shook her head, attempting to break Agnes’ grasp on her shoulders. But the ghostlike figure was deceptively strong.

“It’s true. I had a dream just like Mary had a vision, but I’m supposed to tell you.”

“That’s all your evidence?” Fiona asked. “Because remember, we spoke about how dreams aren’t always reality.”

Agnes had once stopped speaking to Skittery, one of the other newsboys, for an entire day because the dream version of him had spilled hot coffee on her lap.

“You’re right there, Fiona. I will give you that,” Agnes nodded. “BUT. I also know you haven’t had your monthly.”

Fiona’s face flushed.

“Don’t be silly, Agnes.”

“I’m not,” she shook her head. “We all have our monthlies at the same time of the month. All of the girls that get them always get them around the same time. ‘Cept the girls who are sick or too young or who get pregnant.”

“That’s impossible,” Fiona shook her head. “Race and I aren’t married.”

“FIONA,” Agnes almost shouted. Fiona put her finger to her lips as a warning not to disturb the others. Not only were some of the newsies home for lunch, but the Lodging House ran a school in the afternoons a couple of days a week.

The children attending were already shuffling into the classroom and getting settled at their desks on the floor below them, the sound of desks slamming and chalk clanging against their slates ringing out.

“Sorry,” Agnes shook her head. She tried again, this time her voice came out in a whisper, “Fiona!”

“What?”

“Mary wasn’t married to Joseph either. So maybe you’re the next Virgin Mary,” she grinned. She was missing her eyetooth on the right-hand side, and it was even more pronounced when she smiled.

“Good point,” Fiona nodded as if she was actually considering it.

“Plus before my mom died, she had lotsa kids and I can tell a pregnant lady when I see one. Remember when Hannah was pregnant? I knew right away.”

She nodded, referring to Jack Kelly’s wife. Jack had been the newsboy that had taken the lead around the Lodging House, and now that he and Hannah had moved out, there seemed to be such a huge shift in the dynamics of the newsies. Like it was the beginning of the end of their childhoods, but no one wanted to admit it. 

The pair had married less than a year ago, and already had a three-month-old in a cramped tenement apartment just up the block. It didn’t have a private bathroom. Jack and Hannah had to share one with the entire floor. And when the neighbors’ son cried as he died of dysentery two months ago, Jack, Hannah and their new daughter could hear everything.

Hannah had confided in Fiona that the last three nights of the child’s life were especially painful to listen to, tears brimming in her eyes as she whispered of the horror to her childhood friend.

“When we move out, it ain’t gonna be nothing like this,” Race promised Fiona as they left just after their first visit to Jack and Hannah’s apartment. “I promise. You even gonna have a garden if you want to plant ya flowers, and a bath so you can take one on ya own whenever you wanna boil the water. It’s gonna just be me and you in our own Garden of Eden.”

But back then, babies and a home of their own seemed to be so far away. So far away that Fiona believed in her garden and her own private tub with big claw feet. She believed in having uninterrupted nights with Racetrack and mornings with eggs and sausages and whispering in each other’s ears without worrying someone would overhear.

But now, the dreams seemed about as real as the coffee the Phantom Skittery had spilled on Phantom Agnes.

“You did, didn’t you?” Fiona agreed with Agnes, remembering how she had announced that Hannah was pregnant before she and Jack were even married.

Hannah, ashamed that everyone knew she had given in to Jack, locked herself in the bathroom for several hours while the rest of the girls tried to console her.

“But, since I made Hannah cry, I’m going to keep this our secret and won’t tell. I mean, I know you didn’t do anything bad to get the baby or anything. And since you and Race aren’t married, and I know you’re a good girl, I know the baby is from Jesus.”

“Yes,” Fiona smiled, “From Jesus.”

*******

After dinner, Fiona and Race headed out into Manhattan for their evening walk. Even though they were out in the city all day, their feet tired and swollen from selling newspapers, most of the couples used the guise of the evening to disappear together.

It was the one time of day when you could sneak precious kisses without detection, and spend time just the two of you. In the dizziness of the city, it was amazing how quickly everything else seemed to disappear around you if you were concentrating on just one other person.

Racetrack Higgins checked his pocket watch, took off his flat cap and slicked back his hair before putting it back on his head.

“We got a good hour and a half,” he smiled, showing off his crooked teeth. “Just me an’ you.”

He pulled Fiona close by the waist, kissing her forehead. She smiled, the faint smell of tobacco on clothes tickling her nose as she curled up closer to him.

The pair walked wordlessly for a couple of blocks, just happy to be in each other’s arms.

Racetrack broke the silence.

“Miriam told me you’ve been sick three times this week. You okay?”

Fiona nodded.

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

“We tell each other everything, Fi. Why you hiding that? If you need to see a doctor, I can help you, I ain’t gonna lose you, too…”

“I don’t need a doctor, Race,” Fiona shook her head.

The pair stopped under one of the streetlights as a man ignited a flame in it, lighting up the left side of Race’s face. He looked so handsome in the light as he chewed on his bottom lip.

“Why?” he asked. “I know we’re poor as pigs, but if you need something, I’m going to make sure you get it. I told you when we were little, I was going to take care of you. And I mean it.”

He pulled her closer to him, as though holding her meant nothing could touch them.

“Can you take care of one more?” Fiona asked, her words muffled by his waistcoat.

“One more? Whaddaya mean?”

“I think I’m….” Fiona paused. “In the family way…”

It took Race a minute to realize what she was saying, and Fiona could see the signs of recognition in his face.

“What….wh—how?”

Fiona shrugged.

“The usual way.”

“Shit,” Race murmured, half incredulous, half terrified. “You sure?”

“Agnes has predicted it,” she answered blowing up her cheeks and rolling her eyes. “But don’t worry, she thinks Jesus is the father.”

A smile spread across Race’s lips.

“I don’t want Jesus touching you the way I do.”

Fiona’s face burned hot, and the blood rushing to her ears and making them tingle.

“Shush,” she looked behind her; as if someone she knew would magically appear and instantly know she wasn’t as pure as she should be.

“So,” Race broke their embrace first. He reached in his pocket for a cigarette and shoved it between his lips. “I’m gonna be a dad to some half-Irish half-Italian thing?”

He let out a little laugh as he reached for his matches.

“It’ll be a baby, not a thing,” she corrected him.

“Right,” he nodded, inhaling a drag.

He let out the smoke, forming an O with it as he exhaled.

“You excited?” he asked, his voice flat.

“Are you?”

Race pulled Fiona to a nearby bench. A little girl with huge brown eyes sat beside it, her hands and bottom lip outstretched, as if asking wordlessly asking the couple for a coin.

“Sorry, sweetheart,” Fiona gave her a sad smile and the little girl nodded, moving her hands toward other passersby hopefully.

“A course,” Race nodded. “I always wanted to be a dad. And I always wanted to marry you.”

“But?”

He passed the cigarette to Fiona, who took a drag, inhaling sharply and letting it burn her lungs.

“I thought we was going to wait until we was 20 or 21 to have a kid,” he told her, as though those two years were a lifetime away.

“Things happen we don’t plan,” she said handing the cigarette back to him with a shrug.

“Yeah,” he nodded. “Maybe it’s a good thing. Get my ass outta Sheepshead.”

She studied his face for a moment.

“Were you there today insteada selling?”

He looked at his shoes, drawing circles on the ground with his toe.

“It don’t matter,” he took another drag, exhaling it into the crowd in front of him.

“Yes, it does,” Fiona answered weakly, her voice barely audible above the din of the city.

Race checked his pocket watch and then slipped it back into place. He then turned and faced Fiona.

“The only thing that matters is that you and me are together. That’s it.” He grabbed her hand and squeezed it so hard her knuckles pinched. “And we’re gonna be.”

She nodded slowly, letting a little wave of excitement rush over her as she thought about holding a tiny bundle that belonged to them alone.

He scooted closer to her, putting his bad arm, the one that had been broken in the fight, around her shoulders. Sometimes he still winced in pain when he moved it to certain angles, but tonight, he was going to ignore it.

With the cigarette between his index and forefinger of his free hand, he put his hand on her stomach.

“You wanna marry me?” he asked, his lips so close to her ear that his words tingled inside them.

He’d asked her this several times before at different stages in their lives. When they first met and she had suffered night terrors thinking about her father and mother and the orphanage, when they were 14 and she’d had a crush on another boy, when they were 15 and Race briefly dated an Italian girl named Isabella, telling Fiona that he still wanted to marry her, but he just wanted to kiss Isabella a few times.

The latter had Fiona fuming for weeks.

But recently, he’d been asking her after coming home from Sheepshead, after three pints of beers, promising her a future before they made love when they had those rare and precious stolen moments together. She always nodded, never taking him seriously.

“Of course I do,” she gave him the same smile she always did when he asked.

He nodded and threw his cigarette on the ground, stamping it out with the faded leather of his right boot. Taking his free hand, he fished around in his pocket for a moment, retrieving a rosary.

Fiona knew all about the rosary, the silver-plated and partially green tarnished crucifix with its black beads that had been worn from rubbing as its former owner recounted her prayers on it.

It was the only thing Race had of his mother. The only material thing in his personal effects file when his uncle had checked him out of the orphanage as a little boy. Three months later, that same uncle abandoned him one overcast morning to grab a train to Nevada, leaving behind the crucifix and a hastily written note. Race never saw him again, even though he had promised to send for him. But, Race figured, it had only been something he had written to sound nice, not because he actually meant it.

Aside from two or three fading pictures of his mother, which he kept underneath the sock filled with money for his and Fiona’s future. She was even more secret, more precious, than the money clip.

And beneath his pocket watch, he kept it with him wherever he went, hoping his mother was looking down on him with some pride. Hoping she didn’t hate him for killing her when he was born, the way the nuns and uncle reminded him.

With a shaky hand, he pressed it into Fiona’s palm.

“You want me to pray?” she laughed, rubbing her fingers over the beads and silently hoping his mother, Maria, would have approved of her for her son.

“Naw,” he shook his head. “I want you to have it.”

“Why?” she knitted her brow.

“ ‘Cause I ain’t got money for a ring. So I’m giving you the most precious thing I got, because I mean it this time. I want to marry you, make you an honest woman.”

“Like planning a date sewing a wedding dress, serious?” she asked, her eyes brimming with hot tears.

“I didn’t want to do it this way, but I ain’t gotta let you be showing while we ain’t married. You don’t deserve that. You and Katarina can make a dress, we’ll talk to the priest, have a lunch at Tibby’s after. And I’ll buy you a real diamond ring one day,” he grinned. “I promise.”

“You promise,” she echoed the words back to him.

He kissed her on the lips, a smile breaking out.

“You keep that safe,” he gestured to the rosary.

“I will,” Fiona nodded. “I won’t lose sight of it.”

He grinned, pulling her even closer to him and kissing her hair.

And that’s how life begins.

Or ends.


	2. The Bad Da

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, very much a work in progress. Please point out any inconsistencies you see. 
> 
> This is very much a memories chapter, so hold on tight. Let me know what is and what isn't working for you.

Fiona curled up in bed that evening, the sighs of the girls around her as they slipped into sleep thick in the thin spring air. It was one of those rare nights in the Lodging House: not too hot and not too cold. Bliss.

She felt for Race’s crucifix she’d put under her pillow, rubbing it just one more time to make sure she hadn’t completely imagined the last few hours. For now, she was going to keep this a secret between Race and herself, something only they knew, at least for a few days.

As she stretched out on her back, she cradled her stomach with her right hand. Was she imagining the whole thing? Girls did go months without having their monthlies and no little stranger turned up. Was she speaking too soon when telling Race?

Just as quickly as the moment of doubt entered her head, she began to feel a pinch and fullness in her breasts, as if to quell any doubt.

Her own mother had only had one other child after Fiona, a little girl named Aine who had only lived a few days. 8-year-old Fiona had tried to do everything to keep her little sister from leaving the world. She had cradled her in her arms when her mother was still weak from the birth. She tried to help her suckle to her mother’s breast.

When that wouldn’t work, she poured sugar in water and tried to get Aine’s greyish pink lips to open for the concoction. But they stayed shut, as if she knew she was destined for Heaven.

Aine had been so tiny when she slipped out of her mother, barely even enough skin to cover her ribs. When Fiona picked her up, it wasn’t like the round weight of the babies she'd held before, but Aine was jagged and all angles.

Fiona remembered her mother speaking in low whispers to her friend, Siobhan, who lived in the apartment with her husband and three children just above them. When Fiona’s father and Siobhan’s husband left their apartments for weeks at a time, disappearing into the underbelly of the city only to emerge half-drunken or fresh from street fights, the two of them sat together while Fiona played with Siobhan’s daughter, Aileen.

“I think I’m up the duff,” Fiona’s mother had said to Siobhan in a voice she was sure the little girls couldn’t hear. But Fiona had heard it, and she suddenly dropped her doll on the floor in front of her. It landed with a thud.

“Fi, girl, you gave me a fright. Keep hold of that doll, will ya? Yer da ain’t goin to get yous another one,” her mother had said, giving her a stern look, but then secretly smiling at Fiona.

“Yes, ma’m,” Fiona echoed, picking it back up and sitting next to Aileen so closely that she could smell the butter from the morning that was between Aileen’s fingers.

“But you’d had such trouble after Fiona,” Siobhan said, lowering her voice, but still, not enough. “You sure?”

Fiona’s mother nodded gravely, “Yes. Ain’t had me monthly for t’ree mont’s now. And me breasts are so sore, I had to tell Fiona not to pull me laces as tight.”

Fiona smiled at the memory, one of the few nice times she got to share with her mother during her brief time on earth. She pulled the covers to her chin, even though she wasn’t cold, and silently prayed that her mother would be proud of her, even if she and Race weren’t yet married.

Most girls in the Lodging House had every intention of being good girls until they got married, but sometimes they just fell in love, and it seemed futile to wait.

Wait for what, anyway?

It’s not like it was happening often for the residents of the Lodging House, but hormones did run high as they neared aging out. Sometimes Fiona could overhear the boys when she passed their floor going down to breakfast bragging about a girl from a factory, or from one of Medda’s shows they’d managed to convince to go all the way. And of course, the boys egged him on, encouraging him and laughing.

For the girls, it was much quieter. Hannah had confided in Fiona that she and Jack ended up making love in Central Park one evening after nightfall. She hadn’t meant for it to happen. But the sly kisses and sidelong glances only tided them over for so long.

“I don’t get why they call it ‘making love,’” Hannah told wide-eyed Fiona, who was still “pure” at the time. “It’s not all that romantic, it pinches and it was over in a minute.”

A few months later, Hannah confessed it had gotten better with practice. As she told Fiona, her face reddened and she moved her hands to her face as if to shield some of her shame from her friend.

As Fiona rubbed her hand over her stomach, she tried to piece together when the baby must’ve found its way into her. She and Race had become regular, even though she had sworn to Katarina that she was going to wait until she was married like the priest had told them on a fiery Sunday morning mass. She even promised Father Flanagan she wouldn't lie with a man that wasn't her husband, which Mush said wasn't his business anyway after the girls returned from the service, recounting their declaration.

Race had thirstily kissed her for months, telling her he was going to marry her anyway, and that he didn’t understand the difference. But each time, she stopped herself, even though she could feel her body growing hot and flushed when the two of them kissed a little too passionately.

But one night, it just happened, and it was like a floodgate opened.

The pair were standing outside of the Lodging House just after curfew, shielded from view in a nearby alleyway that smelled faintly of dog piss, but was at least a little bit private.

“Fi,” Race whispered in her ear. “Please?” 

She shook her head, pulling away from him for a moment. And it was then she realized she was saying no, but the rest of her wanted it more than she wanted to take her next breath. 

“I promised Father Flanagan,” she shook her head, resting her head on the brick building behind them. “Remember, he said it’s a woman’s duty to save herself for her husband?” 

Race grabbed her waist and moved his hands down to her backside making her tingle. She grabbed his hands, in a feeble effort to stop him. 

“But, I’m gonna be ya husband, right?”

Fiona nodded slowly.

“Then I don’t see a problem,” he smirked leaning in and kissing her again, as though their bodies were engulfed in flames. And it was then, she could see why Hannah couldn’t say no any longer, and why she had given in.  
Shaking her head, Fiona broke the kiss again.

“Okay, say we do,” she whispered in his ear.

“Yeah?” Race grinned, his smile so big it looked as though it could burst through his cheeks. 

“Where would we do it? 

Race considered it for a moment, then looked around them at the stray cat who had made his home in the darkest corner of the alley, before peering around the corner of the Lodging House. 

“Skittery and his girl did it here once,” Race answered earnestly.

“Here?” Fiona asked, knitting her brows. “Like in the alleyway?” 

“Yeah,” Race shrugged. He leaned into her neck, inhaling her slightly lavender scent. Grinning, he started to pull her dusty pink top skirt toward him.

“Whoa,” Fiona shook her head, putting her hands on his chest. “How do you do it in an alleyway?”

“Really, Fi?” Race asked, half frustrated, half about to laugh.

Fiona’s face grew hot as she nodded, moving a stray piece of hair that had fallen from her ribbon behind her ear. For all the things the girls talked about together, the mechanics of sex wasn’t exactly one of them, least of all how to do it standing up.

  
She knew it could pinch. She knew it could get better with time. She knew her mother absolutely hated doing it with her father. And when she’d heard him demanding it of her, he’d always slam the door while their bed made faint squeaks until it stopped. 

“No, wait,” Race shook his head. “I got a better idea.” 

As silently as they could, the pair made their way to the classroom, which was all prepared for the next day’s lessons. The benches were tucked neatly against the wall, the desks with built-in chairs sitting with open mouths and waiting for students.

“Kloppman sometimes forgets to close it up,” he grinned, his tongue between his teeth. “Tip I learned from Blink.”

Fiona shook her head and let out a small laugh.

Race shut the door behind them, engulfing them in darkness. Without the full moon, she wouldn’t have been able to see him at all. But when she faced him, she could see him smiling, not one of his smug grins, but a genuine look of joy.

He kissed her on her lips again before sitting down on the floor, leaning against the wall and motioning to her. Fiona sat down between his legs, her head on his chest, his hands taking hers around her waist.

“You sure you want to?” he asked her, kissing her neck. “Because I am gonna be your husband when we’se got enough money. Stuff Father Flanagan.”  
  
“Race,” Fiona giggled, squeezing his hands.

 A moment of silence passed between them. 

“Yes,” her voice pierced through it, but she still whispered, as if they were sharing a holy moment. “I want to.”

And while that first time had been somewhat better than Hannah had described her first time with Jack, it was neither amazing nor horrible, neither earthshattering nor changing. But she did swear Race had a little extra spring in his step that next morning as he kissed her to make his way to his favorite selling spot.

Moving her finger over the crucifix under her pillow, checking for the fourth time that it was still there, she thought about the night she hoped the baby was conceived. Of course, she couldn’t be sure. There were more stolen nights in the schoolroom, a couple in the alleyway, even one behind Tibby’s. 

But since neither was allowed in the other’s room, everything always felt so rushed and brief, as though Race were living up to his name elsewhere. She couldn’t blame him though, the constant chattering of all of the other residents, the passersby as they stole moments in the alley, they didn’t really lend to the romantic lovemaking Fiona had imagined it could be.

One night, after Race’s arm was almost completely healed, he came into the dining room late. Fiona had been silently worried about him as they hungrily passed the rolls, and then the potatoes made their way around. 

She plastered on a fake smile, as she dolloped a roasted potato on her on her plate and handing the bowl to Katarina, chewing on her lip.

Just as she thought she couldn’t stand another minute of Race’s unconfirmed absence, he burst in with a cigar between his teeth and bills fanned out in front of him.

“Whoa, what happened Racie?” Kid Blink, the newsboy who wore a patch to cover his blind eye, asked his friend, his face almost white.

“I’ve finally won!” he smiled. “My ship has come in.”

“Your horse won?” Fiona asked him, her jaw dropping.

“Naw, it came in third. But that’s $7, Fi!”

His grin couldn’t get any wider as all of the boy newsies crowded around him, ruffling his hair, counting his dollar bills and asking him so many questions he couldn’t possibly keep up. 

“Gentlemen,” he laughed. “I will also all enquiries tomorrow. Tonight, I am taking this lady out for dinner. And don’t expect us back til tomorrow night.” 

He pulled Fiona up by the hand and twirled her around, as though they were in a grand ballroom. And, she supposed, Race was in his own personal ballroom already.

“What?” “Where ya goin’?” “Who gave you the tip?”

The choruses rang out as Race pulled Fiona outside the Lodging House and onto the porch, giving her a deep kiss. 

“I know ya said not ta gamble as much, but we gotta save up somehow. And here we are.” 

“You gonna save some of that?” Fi asked, raising her left eyebrow.

“Of course, yes,” Racetrack answered. “But, I finally get to take you out to have the night you deserve. And nothing can bring an Italian man down when he’s got money in his pocket and a beautiful woman on his arm, can it?” 

He smirked, crooking his good arm for her to take it. Despite herself, Fiona laughed, his elation positively contagious.

They found themselves eating out at a restaurant nearby, an extremely rare luxury for them. The noise of the restaurant flustered Fiona as she tried to remember to sit up straight and to use her fork correctly.

Did it go in the left hand or right hand when she cut meat? She couldn’t remember what the nuns at the orphanage had told her, their voices as though they were shouting at her through a tunnel. 

But Race was in a state of pure ecstasy. He didn’t care what anyone else thought of him as he dove into his turkey leg, using his bare hands. Fiona’s face slightly reddened, but she kept quiet. 

“You shoulda seen it, Fi….we almost won $100,” he grinned between bites. “My horse was ahead until the very end when the other two got in front. But I was so excited, I wasn’t going to let only winning $7 bring me down. If we woulda won that $100…” 

He took another bite of his turkey before he could finish the sentence.

“You’d put a down payment on a tiny house outside the city?” she asked cocking her eyebrow.

“Of course,” he nodded between bites. “We’d move out tomorrow.” 

She laughed, taking a swig of her root beer. 

After they’d finished their dinner, their bellies full and her corset feeling a little bit on the tighter, Race mischievously grinned again.

“I’ve always wanted to take you to a hotel,” he smiled. “I know, it’s a bit much, but we can be alone and actually sleep the night together.”

Fiona’s heart skipped a beat. A hotel?

When she was first starting out as a newsgirl, she used to sell near a fancy hotel. To an 11-year-old, everyone looked so glamorous as they made their way in and out, stepping out of cabs or Renault town cars as their heels on the pavement announced their presence. 

She had fantasized about staying in one, covering herself with a down comforter and ordering up a huge plate of pancakes in the morning. Best of all, she’d be on her own. Not like at the orphanage when the children cried and wet the bed at night, or coughed or winced when the priests sometimes came in when they thought they were all asleep.

Not like the Lodging House where there weren’t any priests to pull the covers back, but the girls sighed in their sleep, coughed, snored and winced.

What would it even be like to sleep uninterrupted except for the sounds of the traffic below. 

“Race,” her jaw dropped. “A hotel?” 

“I know you’re gonna say we should be saving our money, but-“

She shook her head. 

“No, let’s go!”

The grinned at one another and ran hand in hand through the city in search of a hotel they could afford. The first one was too cheap, with what looked like women who were renting by the hour. Race shook his head, not good enough for them. 

The next one was nice, but a little bit above their budget, with a swinging chandelier in the lobby and a sign out front saying they could get en-suite rooms for an extra $5.

And the third one, it was perfect.

“Mr. and Mrs. Anthony Higgins,” Racetrack told the concierge as he slapped his money down on the front desk, his signature smug grin on his face. “Checking in for a night.” 

Fiona’s face reddened at the lie, but she couldn’t help but smile in anticipation.

“Certainly,” the concierge replied. He was a boy a little bit younger than Race with dark hair and light eyes. He was dressed in a ridiculous looking suit, topped with a sideways hat. Fiona thought he looked like the illustrations she’d seen of a penguin. “Follow me.”

He led the pair up two flights of stairs, handing Race the key to room number 15.

“There are sinks in every room with glasses. The toilet and baths are one floor up, ladies on the left, men on the right. Enjoy your stay,” he smiled. 

Race sunk the key into the lock and the pair burst into the room.

It wasn’t anything special. The room was painted a drab off-white with paint chips peeling near the ceiling.

There was a double bed in the center with clean white sheets, a desk shoved to the side with a folding chair, an armoir and the sink next to it, finished with silver-colored metal taps. In fact, there was hardly enough room for the both of them to stand in the space that the bed wasn’t occupying together.

But to the two of them, it might as well have been Buckingham Palace.

“I love it,” Fiona smiled sitting on the bed. It was softer than the bed at the Lodging House, and she knew already she wasn’t going to want to move in the morning. 

“Nice, huh?” he grinned, sitting back on his heels and pulling out a cigar. Race had a habit of sticking them in his mouth, rubbing his forefinger and thumb over it, without actually lighting it.

Lighting them cost money. And that was reserved for a special occasion, like now.

He grabbed his matches and struck one on his shoe, while Fiona busied herself taking her worn black leather lace-up boots off and tossing them to the side next to the armoir. Grinning, she leaned on the bed and pushed the red curtains aside, trying to get a glimpse of the view.

“Well,” she laughed. “The view’s a brick wall.”

“I like this view,” Race grinned as he puffed on his lit cigar, looking at Fiona as though he could eat her for his second course. 

Fiona smiled and stood up, walking to the door and turning the key in the lock one more time just to make they were secure. 

“I think mine’s better,” she grinned, playfully grabbing his suspenders.

He dropped the hand holding his cigar to his waist and kissed her longingly.

“Told ya all that time at the races would pay off,” he grinned.

She rolled her eyes, leaning against the doorframe as Race took a seat on the bed.

“Can I see you?” he asked, puffing his cigar again.

“What do you mean? You’re seeing me right now.”

He laughed.

“When we’re together…ya know…doing it…we never get to slow down and see each other. It’s like we’re always in a hurry in case we’re going to get caught. I feel like I ain’t never seen you, Fi.”

She nodded, her face reddening, knowing exactly what he meant. When she fantasized about being married, she thought about knowing every inch of her husband’s body. But truth be told, she hadn’t seen much of Race’s, instead knowing it only by touch. 

With his eyes on her, she began to unbutton her blouse with shaky fingers, before pulling the same dusty pink overskirt off. She placed the clothes on the desk, standing in front of him in her stained petticoat, chemise and corset. She was sure the skin on her chest was completely red now. 

“It’s nothing special,” she blushed, running her finger over the faded blue ribbon at the chest of her chemise.

She needed to replace her petticoat, as it had been patched up in three different placed, and the corset was one of only two she owned. They weren’t beautiful, like the ones she’d seen some of the boys staring at longingly in the shop windows talking dirty about when they thought the girls weren’t in earshot. Instead, Fiona couldn’t even remember when her undergarments actually had been earnestly white.

“Yes it is,” he nodded. “’Cause you’re mine.”

She smiled again, getting the confidence to pull her stockings off, and then her petticoat, now as naked as she’d ever been in front of man. But Race didn’t take his brown eyes off of her, and to Fiona, they looked like the eyes of people she’d seen admiring the art collections near one of the art museums when she sold there. It was almost like a silent reverie, a semi-spiritual experience.

“Can you help me with my corset?” she asked, turning around and gesturing to her laces. “My mother told me to pull them as tight as they could go….” 

She heard Race stand up and then felt him brush her blond hair over her shoulder so he could see the laces better.

“With all due respect, I think we should leave our mothers out of this,” he told her, kissing the exposed skin on her neck where her hair was.

But instead of pulling at her laces, he pulled at the ribbon in her hair, letting what was partially up fall down across her back. He ran his hand through it before moving that over her shoulder and out of his way as well.

Fiona grabbed the pink and white ribbon that had been keeping her hair from her face as Racetrack began fumbling with the corset laces, his hands just as shaky as hers were. 

“How do you tie this?” he asked, laughing as he puffed away at his cigar, picking at the knot in the worn, yellowing laces.

“The girls all help each other dress and undress,” she told him looking down at unstained wooden floor. “I guess some of them ain’t as gentle.”

“Do I gotta learn for when we’se married?” he asked, finally pulling the knot free. Fiona could feel the relief wash over her as her body came back to life and the corset started to give way.

“I guess,” she laughed as Race finally pulled the bottom lace free.

“So do you slip this over your head?” he asked.

Fiona nodded and he pulled it toward her face, slipping it over her head, gently placing the corset next to her clothes on the desk. Wordlessly, he pulled up her chemise as well, carefully lifting it over her head, making her entire body tingle as he placed it on top of the corset. The sudden breeze in the room made her shiver. 

He snuffed out his cigar as he pulled her toward him by her bare waist, her body on fire in a mix of embarrassment and desire. He kissed the side of her face before dipping his fingers into her cotton bloomers and pulling them down so that they fell to her ankles.

Slowly, she turned around to face him, and he backed up, tripping on the bed and falling into a sitting position. They both awkwardly laughed before Race turned soberly serious.

“I wanna freeze time right here like this. I want to sit and look at you like this all night, Fi, ‘cause I dunno when I get to see you like this again. All beautiful and all mine.” 

She stood for a moment in front of him, feeling like an ancient sculpture or statue to be admired before Race finally lost control and pulled her toward him.

And everything about the next few hours was perfect. 

The lovemaking, the slipping between the faux down sheets, the silence except for the foot traffic below, sleeping next to one another as if it were perfectly normal. Race’s hand rested on her hip and her hand on his shoulder the entire night, as if they were dancing to music only they could hear. And, in a way, they were.

Fiona smiled at the memory, letting it lull her to sleep.

Yes, she hoped it was then this baby was made. Not like the way she pictured she herself had been made.

Fiona was born in Ireland, her parents marriage like two mismatched puzzle pieces. She pictured her father shoving her mother down and forcing his way inside of her, the same horrible sounds she’d heard her entire life when he wanted sex. Nothing beautiful, nothing romantic, like her night with Race had been.

Fiona's family made their way to New York when she was only two, and her only memory of home life was the three of them shoved together in a one-bedroom apartment. Fiona slept on a straw pallet and blanket near the fireplace in the kitchen, while her parents took the bedroom.

Though, when her father went away, sometimes for days at a time without them knowing where he was, her mother would let her curl up in the bed next to her. The bed was sometimes still warm from where her father had been nursing his hangover for several days.

And because she didn’t know if she’d get the Good Da or Bad Da when he came home, she relished the silent stolen moments when it was just her and her mother, their two blonde heads together on the bed as they read Bible verses or sang together, or simply cuddled. What Fiona wouldn't give to have one more lazy morning like that with her mother.  

Fiona cupped her stomach, the light of the life growing inside of her so strong she could swear she felt it exploding.

This child wasn’t going to be wondering if they’d get Good Da or Bad Da. Instead, she’d make sure she’d encapsulate that warm feeling she got from her mother on those special days alone, and give it all to this child. And Race would, too. He or she would be the most loved child in New York. 

And as she finally drifted off to sleep, she was woken up with a start by Katarina gently shaking her shoulders.

“What is it?” Fiona asked.

Katarina leaned forward, her curly brown hair unfurled and the ends tickling Fiona’s face.

“It’s Race,” Katarina whispered.

“Is he okay?”

Before Katarina could answer, Race's voice drifted through the open window, piercing the silent night.

“Don’t ever. Set. Foot. Here. Again,” he screamed, each word slurring into the next. “Or I’ll murder you.”

Fiona shut her eyes and took a deep breath. _The second time in six months? Jesus._

“Look, youse wee WOP,” a voice thick with an Irish accent, like so thick it was like butter melting on toast, screamed back. “I know she’s livin’ ‘ere. And she’s my kid. I gotta right to see her.”

“You ain’t wanted to see her for tha past decade,” Race spat back.

“And what do youse know about it?" 

“She’s going to be my wife, that's how I knows about it.”

Fiona’s face went white and she scurried over to the open window, trying to shut it before any of the other girls heard. Of course, the girls were used to street noise like this when they kept the window open, and most of them could probably sleep through a train steaming through the room.

But she still closed it, her teeth clenching as the window squeaked on itself.

“What’s going on?” Ruth, whose bed was closest to the window, asked, her voice cracking with sleep.

“Nothing,” Fiona whispered. She kissed her on the forehead and smoothed back her reddish brown curls. “Go back to sleep." 

Ruth nodded and turned over, her body giving way to sleep again before she'd even fully faced the wall.

“What is going on?” Katarina asked, grabbing her robe and lacing up her shoes. “Is that your da again?”

Fiona nodded reluctantly.

“I guess he forgot he’s been here before, and had the same conversation with Kloppman.”

“Though that conversation was little less….ridiculous. Race sounds drunk,” Katarina whispered, her voice low as the girls made their way to the staircase.

The pair tiptoed down the staircases, trying not to step on any creaky floorboards as they made their way down. 

“He probably is,” Fiona hissed back. "And it sounds like this time, me da is too."

Just as they hit the boys’ floor, the sound of a hand slapping rang out in the night.

“Katarina, I gotta say, you look gorgeous, even at this time’a night,” Skittery, one of Race’s best friends, was sitting on the stairs leading away from the boys’ bunk with his head between his hands. It looked like he’d already been sick on his own waistcoat, his brown hair in disarray as his flat cap sat floating beside him. 

“Charming,” Katarina answered as Skittery leaned forward to be sick again.

“She ain’t gonna marry a drunk WOP like you,” Fiona’s father’s voice came into full effect as she neared the door. “She may be as stupid as her ma, but I thought she at least had some sense.”

“Don’t you ever call Fiona _or_ her ma stupid. You don’t deserve to have they names in ya mouf,” Race screamed, prompting Kloppman to come out of his room, putting on his glasses as though he were still searching for his face.

“What’s all this racket?” he asked, tightening his robe around his middle. As he moved to go downstairs, Skittery threw up again above them, the sound of the sick hitting the floor making the three of them wince. 

“Hit me again,” Fiona’s father yelled. “Do it! I dare youse, ya wee piece o’ shite .”

Fiona put her hand on the doorknob of the Lodging House, and as she did so, Katarina grabbed her friend’s shoulder. 

“Don’t,” she implored Fiona. “It ain’t gonna end well.”

And as much as she knew her friend was right, Fiona opened the door, facing her Bad Da for the first time in almost 7 years.

“Enough,” she yelled. 

And the pair went silent.

 

 


	3. Piece of Her Heart

_**Late September 1894** _

The sound of Fiona’s mother scrubbing the laundry against the washing board woke Fiona up before her eyes even opened. 

For a moment, she felt safe, content and warm. The morning sun peeked through the off-white curtain that gave her parents privacy from the rest of the tenants in Hell’s Kitchen. Peeling the linen sheath back ever so slightly, she could see rows and rows of laundry already drying between apartments. One line was moving as a woman to the left pinned wet washing to it before sending it back out to the precarious position between windows. 

Fiona had spent last night in her parents’ bed. Her father had failed to show up for the third night in a row, and her mother knew, if he wasn’t back by 9pm, he wasn’t going to show up at all. It was then she’d allow Fiona to grab her doll and curl up next to her.

To Fiona, it was the safest place in the world. 

The little girl hesitantly lowered her feet to the wooden floor and made her way into the kitchen, where her mother was reverently trying to get a stain out of what looked like a bed sheet. 

Since her father would unpredictably leave them alone whenever he pleased, Fiona’s mother decided she needed to take on some work so that she could feed her daughter if he wasn’t there. So, she had taken on some of the extra washing and mending from Mrs. Reilly upstairs, spending her free moments scrubbing mystery stains out of other people’s clothing or darning socks and sewing up holes. 

If business really picked up, Fiona would sometimes leave her lessons at lunchtime to help her mother get it all finished. She couldn’t afford to lose the washing income. Without it, the pair would have to wait until Fiona’s father returned and then sobered up enough to give them the money to go to the grocer. And how long that would be could be anyone's guess.

He wasn’t thrilled his wife was washing and sewing. Not at all. And when he found out, he grabbed her by her collar and told her it made him look as though he couldn’t take care of his family. 

“But ya can’t,” Fi’s mother answered, in a rare moment of defiance. 

He punched her so hard that she had to steady herself on the dilapidated chair nearby. The chair squeaked under her weight, threatening to topple over. 

But he never mentioned the washing and sewing business again. 

“Morning, Fi girl.” 

“Morning, mum,” Fiona smiled at her mother as she made her way to the stove to heat up a coffee and warm up the porridge that had gone cold.  
“We’ve got 10 more orders to mend these socks,” her mother told Fiona as she wiped her brow. It wasn’t even 7am and already the heat was oppressive. “Can you take a couple of pairs with you at lunch and get done under your desk?”

Fiona nodded. It was, of course, forbidden to do practical work like that during your lessons. But Fiona’s teacher, Mrs. Henley, was sensitive to the fact that most of her pupils needed to keep at it to survive. And besides, the old woman reasoned, it was better they were darning socks in class than not there at all. 

“I haven’t even gotten a kiss?” her mother asked with a grin, pulling the little girl toward her. 

Fiona smiled and kissed her mother’s cheek, wiping off a dab of sweat from it. 

“I hafta go to the bathroom,” Fiona murmured from the inside of her mother’s arm as her mother hugged her to her already dripping wet body. 

“Ya sound like an American even more every day,” her mother laughed releasing Fiona and catching her in a smile.

“I AM American,” she protested, to the delight of her mother, who shook her head and continued to work on the white linen she was washing out, cursing under her breath. 

The little girl yawned, longing to crawl back into bed. But instead, she made her way to the shared toilet while her porridge was on the stove, finding herself third in line today. It wasn’t as bad as it could be, but her bladder suddenly felt so full she wasn’t sure she could hold it. 

Finally, after waiting for what seemed like forever, she headed back to the kitchen. Quietly, she ate her porridge and drank her water, making sure the math sums she was assigned to the night before were neatly tucked into her book bag. 

Her mother never stopped scrubbing, which made Fiona smile a little bit. 

After combing her hair and putting her favorite blue ribbon in it, Fiona put on one of the three dresses she owned. Her light blue one: her favorite. It was becoming a little tight around her shoulders and chest, but she wasn’t going to let that stop her from getting as much wear out of it as possible. 

“See you around twelve t’rty then?” her mother wiped her brow and stopped for a moment, a little bit breathless as she watched Fiona tie up her worn leather boots next to the door. 

“Mmmhmmm,” Fiona nodded, checking one more time that the math sheet was still there, in case she had mistakenly let it drop while she was getting ready.

“No kiss?” 

“I’m coming, I’m coming!” Fiona laughed running into her mother’s arms and kissing her cheek. 

“Be a good girl,” her mother called as she made her way to the landing and down the stairs to the street. 

“I always am,” she called back. 

And with that, she was off. 

It would be the last time she would ever see her mother again. 

 

*****

 

When the school bell rang at 12:15, Fiona packed up her belongings to head back home to help her mother with the socks. If there were too many, she might just take the rest of the day off, like she had to do sometimes. Although she liked school, she didn’t mind missing the geography lesson, mostly because she had trouble seeing the maps from so far away. 

Her teacher said she might need glasses to see them more clearly, but with her father spending more and more nights away and bringing less money home than usual, she didn’t dare say anything. She'd rather take the jeers and jokes. The kids in the class almost doubled over when she guessed the teacher was pointing to Spain, when she was really pointing to Ireland. With half of them being from the same mother country, and knowing Fiona was too, they couldn't help but laugh and shout at her. After that, Mrs. Henley stopped calling on her, waiting until she could stand up a bit closer to the map. Then she didn't have as much trouble.

Besides, it had only been a few months since her mother had actually had the energy to do any washing. Fiona almost had to repeat the last year because when her sister died, her mother could barely get out of bed for months on end. Sometimes she’d be fine, cuddling Fiona and singing to her and taking her out for roasted chestnuts a vendor sometimes sold outside their building.

The next day, she’d be a ghost, not speaking when Fiona would try to wake her, lying in her bed for days at a time. She’d refuse food and water, and sometimes it got so bad that she’d urinate in the bed, which Fiona had to clean up so it wouldn’t irritate her da. He was already angry enough seeing her in that state.

When she was like that, even him hitting her about the head didn’t bring her to. So, Fiona had to sit at home and care for her, as well as try and take on some of the washing and sewing. It was a lot for an almost-ten-year-old, but she did her best until her mother finally started coming around. 

Sure, she still had bad days, but she smiled a lot more now. She often told Fiona if it weren’t for her, she wouldn’t know what would have become of her. It made Fiona's heart swell with pride. It went without saying that her mother was her favorite person in her life, and the thought of losing her made a lump rise in her throat. 

Finally, Fiona had almost finished the fifteen-minute walk from the schoolhouse to her apartment building. The September sun was just starting to get a little bit warm, so she rolled up her sleeves as she adjusted her school bag on her shoulder. 

As she got close to her apartment building, she could see there was an ambulance in front of it and several policemen standing around the entrance way. 

Was it Mr. Hersch, the old man from upstairs? Fiona’s mother swore he was almost 100 and was going to keel over any minute now. 

Or maybe it was Mrs. Strauss’ son, who was so ill that he barely left the apartment. She had to walk him to the toilet, and each time Fiona saw him, she almost gasped at how white his skin was, like the paper she wrote on for school.

As she approached her apartment building, she tried to push her way past the policemen unnoticed.

“Sorry, miss. There’s been a crime here. We can’t let you enter right now,” one of the men with bushy brown beard told her. 

“But, I have to have my lunch. My mother’s up there, and I have to help her with her washing,” Fiona pointed upstairs. 

He sighed and scratched his head. He looked to his partner before putting his hand on Fiona’s shoulder. She shrugged it off.

“What apartment is she in? Maybe we can get someone to get your mother and your lunch for you?”

Fiona nodded.

“Apartment 12.” 

The officers exchanged knowing glances, as if tagging each other to break the news to her. 

Finally, a shorter blonde man with an Irish lilt squatted next to her. 

“Your mother’s gone to Jesus,” he said as matter-of-factly as if he were telling her that the sky was blue.

“She can’t have!” Fiona protested. “She was just here a few hours ago! She was scrubbing the linens.”

Fiona felt hot tears well up in her eyes, threatening to spill over. 

“How? What? You must have the wrong house!” 

The Irish officer looked to his partners and they referred to what looked like an official report. 

“Yer name is Fiona Emily O’Connor, is it?”

Fiona nodded, unable to get the words out. 

“Then I’m sorry, missie, but unfortunately, we got it right.” 

“Can I see her? Is she in the ambulance?” 

Fiona ran to the sealed metal horse-drawn carriage and pulled on the handle. But it was locked. She put her ear on the door. 

“Ma? Ma?” she called beating on the steel. “I want to see you! They think you’re dead, but you’re just upset about Aine, aren’t you? Please.”

One of the officers took Fiona by the waist and pulled her off of the carriage, the child’s screams and protests still in his ear. 

“She’s just sad,” Fiona yelled. “She gets real sad and she don’t respond, but I can help.” 

“I’m afraid she’s gone,” the Irish officer said to her, rubbing her back and she started to hiccup and sob. 

Fiona made her way to the curb, sitting down on it and throwing her book bag to her side, not caring if her homework got ruined or not. 

The same Irish officer sat by her side and continued rubbing her back, which Fiona found more uncomfortable than comforting. 

“That’s the daughter?” another man said in the distance. She heard an affirmative response. “And the neighbors say the main suspect is the husband, a Michael O’Connor?” 

Another affirmative. 

Fiona’s heart dropped down into her stomach. 

The Bad Da had won again. And this time, there was no way she was giving the Good Da a chance to come back. 

“Where is she going, then?”

“A neighbor said she’d take her until they can contact some relatives. Won’t be letting her go back to that father, that’s for sure, not if he’s a wanted criminal.” 

Fiona pushed herself against the apartment building, and the Irish officer reluctantly did the same. 

She put her hands over her eyes and counted to 100, and as she did so, she prayed to Jesus, Joseph and the Virgin Mary that when she got to 100, she’d be back in bed and it would all be a terrible dream.

When she got to 100, she opened her eyes and everything was as it was before, with the policemen and ambulance sitting quietly in front of her, their horses whinnying and neighing and stamping, 

So she tried again.

And again.

But no matter what she did, she was still sitting outside her apartment building.

But finally, the ambulance with her mother inside of it pulled away. And with it, she lost a little bit of her heart.


	4. "I'm Terrified"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So...I'm not sure if this works here. I was going to add more memories about Fiona but I felt that would bog down the story too much, so perhaps I'll do memories here and there. 
> 
> Not sure I LOVE this chapter, but hey, it's practice. Let me know what you think.

**1902**

 

The sound of Fiona’s voice yelling at the pair echoed down the street and into the alleyway next to the Lodging House. It wasn’t often Fiona yelled, but when she did, it made Race stop and listen. 

Race struggled to focus his gaze on her as she stood in the doorway of the place that had been their home for the past six years. Her off-white nightgown grazed her bare ankles as she pulled her pale purple spring coat around her for modesty.

Fiona’s best friend, Katarina stood next to her, her long brown hair unfettered and unbrushed and face in a frown. It was the look she gave when she wasn’t amused, usually reserved for her boyfriend, who worked at the dry goods store three doors down. He had a habit of gambling and spitting, just like Race, and when the two of them got together, they could easily earn that look from her.

But it wasn’t Katarina Race was concerned about. Again, he tried to focus his eyes on Fiona through the kaleidoscope of his drunken vision, but she kept moving just out of his gaze. 

He couldn’t help but think of the first day he met Fiona, back when she was 11 and he was 12. It was a hot July day, the kind where the sweat from his palms transferred to the papers he was carrying, making his hands extra tarnished at the end of the day.

He was selling his papers with Katarina, who at the time, as the same height as he was. If they stood next to one another, they could pass as a boy/girl twin pair, so that became their gimmick for a year or two. If someone wouldn’t buy a paper, Katarina would feebly cough into her arm and Race would give them a story about how their mother was sick in bed. He’d say that although his “sister” was getting sick too, they were the only ones who could feed their poor mother, and themselves, after their father had run out on them.

Nevermind that Race was Italian and Katarina’s parents, before they died of cholera, were from Russia. “The public,” as Katarina called them, holding her head up high and repeating the word from her school days, didn’t know it. 

Fiona had approached Katarina in the street that boiling hot afternoon they’d been selling near Hell’s Kitchen. They didn’t get too close to the Irish tenement, as many of the immigrants there were too poor to buy a paper. But close enough, and they could get barbers, doctors, coppers, even social workers, who’d spare a penny for the poor “siblings.”

Instantly, Fiona had caught his attention.

She had long blonde hair with a deep middle part and two of the strands on either side pulled back and secured with a blue ribbon that really looked more like a shoelace. He even remembered she was wearing a pink skirt with white piping, though it was clearly becoming sullen and muddied—and her stockings had a giant hole in the right leg.

It wasn’t that he was attracted to her in that way. He wouldn’t be attracted to anyone like that for a little bit longer, though he did admit he thought certain girls were prettier than others. And if he had to judge, he'd say Fiona was on the "prettier than others" side.

But she reminded him of a doe with her blonde hair trailing behind her and her green eyes searching Katarina. 

“You wanna buy a pape?” Katarina asked Fiona, her little hand shoving the crinkled up gazette toward her.

He couldn’t remember the headline that day, but he knew it wasn’t all that interesting because his sack had stayed heavier than it usually did. By that time of day, it was most often much lighter. 

Fiona shook her head at Katarina and whispered something to her.

And although Race didn’t think she had bad intentions, he knew sometimes he could be wrong about people, and he decided to close in on Katarina and the girl to ensure his “sister” stayed safe.

“You need something from me sistah?” Race asked patting Katarina on the back and looking into the girl’s eyes.

They looked vacant, absent almost. There was a black eye that had pinkened in as it healed framing her left eye. 

“Sorry,” Fiona shook her head. “I didn’t mean to bother you.”

She knitted her eyebrows and looked down, starting to back away.

“Don’t let ‘im scare you off,” Katarina laughed. “He’s fine. Just a protective brother. You got brothers and sistahs?”

Fiona shook her head, opening her mouth to say something but then closing it.

 “This girl,” Katarina gestured to Fiona. “She was askin’ how ya go about sellin’ papes.”

Race looked her up and down. There was something about her that made Race think she was the type of girl who had both parents still alive, who went to school, who went to church on Sunday. The kind of life he and Katarina would kill for. Like she hadn’t gained her edge, the thing most orphans and runaways got from fighting to stay alive on the streets.

Would she be able to stand boys, and girls, who cussed and smoked and spit?

“No offense, but you don’t look like the type,” Race told her, pulling a cigarette he’d rolled that morning out of his pocket.

He struck a match watching Fiona’s face intently to see if her expression changed as he sucked the cigarette in and then slowly exhaled the smoke.

“What do you mean I ‘don’t look the type’?” Fiona asked, putting her hands on her hips.

Her face hadn’t even registered a little bit of disgust at the smoke, so Race reconsidered. 

“Well, ya look like a nice girl who got parents and goes to school and church on purpose.” 

“What’s ‘church on purpose’?”

Race took another drag. 

“You know, like the type who actually goes to church to hear the preacher, not because you have to go ‘cause you’re an orphan or you gotta listen to get a meal.”

Fiona rolled her eyes.

“Obviously, you don’t know me at all then,” she retorted. 

“Ya got parents?” Katarina interjected.

Fiona nodded slowly. 

“Just a da. But he don’t come home for days at a time. My ma, well, she used to do the washing for neighbors, before she—“ 

“So ya need a way to make money to eat?” Katarina finished for her, realizing where the story was going before it even began. “You go to school?”

Fiona nodded.

“I do—well I did. I try to when I can….”

Race looked at Katarina as the pair considered her for their ranks. He took another drag of his cigarette, this time blowing the smoke out of his nose.

“Yeah all right,” Katarina nodded. “We’ll show you what you gotta do.”

“But,” Race interjected, filling the space between the girls. “It ain’t for everybody.”

Fiona nodded and brushed some of her hair behind her ear with her finger. For some reason, it made Race blush. 

“I know,” she nodded.

From then on, their relationship moved forward at lightning speed, until they were inseparable. They were the only constants in each other’s lives, the anchor that held them both down the sea of uncertainty.

He pledged to marry her for the first time when he was 13. By the time he was 16, he knew he was actually serious about making her his wife, that without her, it was like he couldn’t breathe. Fiona was the only thing he was completely sure of, from the time he woke up, to the time he fell asleep at night.

Race had sworn to her their first Christmas Eve together in the Lodging House that he would always take care of her. And he repeated that to her often, on her birthday, writing it misspelled on little cards and notes they passed between one another, and when she broke down crying about her mother.

“I’ll always take care of you,” he’d whisper into her hair. “Always.” 

But looking at her standing at the doorframe of the Lodging House, her long-forgotten father’s Irish temper flaring in front of him, Race felt deflated, like he was a balloon that had been pricked.

For all the things Fiona had been through, his favorite thing about her was that she had never gained an edge like some of the other girls. Instead, she was still soft and almost demure, like she could have been dolled up and taken to a ball with the Astors and no one would know she wasn’t one of them.

She even still cried at things most of the kids had long passed caring over: kids shivering in the street, a mother searching for her son in the crowded city, a dog limping after being run over by a carriage.

 Out of anything in the world, he wanted her to keep that softness. To stay the girl that never drank, barely ever swore or smoked, who didn’t let her life callus her. But how could he do that when he had gotten her pregnant before her 18th birthday? Not only that, before they were even married. How could he have been so stupid? 

He couldn't have kept himself to himself for a little bit longer? 

And how could he take care of her, and this little stranger, when he’d gambled away everything they’d saved except for his last $10? At least that’s how much had been there the last time he had looked… 

Kloppman broke the thick silence between Race and Fiona’s father as he straightened his glasses on his nose. 

“Racetrack, inside, now! You know the rules about drinking and coming back here.”

Like a naughty schoolboy, Race lowered his head and trudged toward Fiona, opened her arms to him. He grabbed ahold of her like she was the only thing that could save him from the thoughts cascading inside of him. Whatever bravado he’d had before, it was knocked out of him after seeing the future mother of his child shivering with embarrassment in the streetlight. 

“Who’s this troll?” Fiona’s father yelled at Kloppman. “What do you want with my daughter?”

Kloppman motioned for Katarina, Race and Fiona to go inside. Although he was older and becoming a little bit frailer by the year, this was by far the first time an angry parent or sibling or boyfriend had come to the Lodging House demanding to see an inhabitant inside of it. Kloppman knew without Fiona having to say a word that she didn’t want to see her father, and he was good at talking them down and convincing them to try to come back another time.

The three of them made their way upstairs toward the school room and recreational room, Race holding on to Fiona and concentrating extra hard on putting one foot in front of the other, like if he lost his train of thought, he might slip over his own feet. 

“You okay?” Katarina asked her friends, but mainly looking at Fiona, searching her face. 

“Yeah,” Fiona nodded. “Go back to sleep.”

Katarina bit her lip and nodded in turn, kissing her best friend on the forehead before making her way upstairs to the girls’ floor. Skittery, who was sitting next to his vomit from a few moments earlier, was lightly snoring, his mouth agape, his head against the bannister. He was going to have an awfully sore neck in the morning.

Fiona sat Race down on the floor and plopped herself in front of him. He shook his head and then put it between his hands, running them through his hair. 

“What’s wrong?” Fiona asked exasperated. If it weren’t enough that her father had just come back to the Lodging House for the third time looking for her, now she had to pick up the pieces for whatever was going on with Race, too.

“Don’t,” Race told her batting her away as she tried to get closer to him. He smelled of whiskey, the smell that reminded her of her childhood and walls shaking and the sound of skin being slapped.

Fiona rolled her eyes and stood up. If the men in her life were going to behave like children, she’d treat them like they were. After all, she was going to be a mother herself in a few months, and it was time she got some practice in. 

“Fi,” Race’s voice was barely audible as he whispered her name.

Fiona stopped for a moment, hearing Kloppman close the door and turn the key in the lock. At least her father had finally given up and left for now. She strained, but she couldn't hear the lilt of his heavy Irish accent yelling into the abyss any longer. It wouldn't be long before he'd get picked up by the police again for public drunkenness, or find some gutter to sleep it off in. 

When her father had shown up the first time, her heart had beat so hard, she swore she could see it almost coming out of her chest.

This time, she barely had time to register it with the whirlwind of threats and Race’s inability to walk in a straight line. She was surprised he and Skittery had even made it home, they were both so far gone.

“What?” Fiona hissed as she turned on her heel.

Race sniffed from underneath his hands and wiped away tears.

She could count on one hand the number of times she’d seen him cry, and each time he did, it felt like an elephant was sitting on her chest. It had happened more often recently, though, as if the weight of his entire life, his mother, his uncle, his time in the orphanage, had come crashing around him and he had no choice put to let something out. He wasn't always crying, but the more frequent trips to Sheepshead and blowing off work, the fights, the drunken nights in the past few months...it wasn't like him. 

This time she sat next to him slowly, not touching him for fear he’d push her away again. 

But he didn’t.

Instead, he scooted closer to her, laid his head on her chest and put his hand to her belly.

“Fi...” he sniffed.

“What is it?”

His tears wet the neck of her nightgown as he rubbed his right hand over her barely swollen stomach, the place where their child was getting bigger by the minute. 

“I’m terrified,” he whispered.

“Of what?” she asked kissing the top of his head. It was slick with cheap hair wax, but she didn't care. 

“Growing up.”


	5. Go West Young Man

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Be aware that this chapter implies sex abuse of a child. Please proceed with caution if this is triggering to you.
> 
> The Orphan Trains were real, as was the New York Foundling Hospital. St. Ignatius is not real, but is based on similar Catholic orphanges.

**1892**

 

Before the Day That Changed Everything, Racetrack Higgins didn’t believe in waking up one day and having your whole life transformed. At 9 years old, he was too wise for things like Santa, and fairy tales.

But that day would prove him wrong, at least about everything turning on a dime. Fairy tales were still up in the air.

By 1892, Racetrack, long before was dubbed Racetrack by the newsies, had been in the St. Ignatius Home for Roman Catholic Boys for what seemed like his entire life. And since he had been there since he was 2, it kind of was his entire life. 

Before that, he had been at the New York Foundling Hospital, taken in by a neighbor after his father had gotten too sick to care for him. The neighbor had handed the infant Race over in a bundle, his clothes soiled, his face red and exasperated from crying for someone who would never come.

His father had given the neighbor a note to give to the orphanage, written in shaky hand, as though he could barely hold the pen. It was in Italian, but Race had it memorized by the time he was old enough to read: “Anthony. Madre: Maria, morto. Padre: Giuseppe, morto. Fratello: Paolo, 4. Di: Tropea, Italia. i genitori lo adorano.”

The Latin he learned in his catechism classes was enough for him to know what it meant. Both his parents were dead. He had an older brother. But they loved him very much.

The little bundle with the note on top contained his mother’s rosary, lined with tiny black beads. Each one, representing a prayer, had marks where she had rubbed them, keeping track of what she was supposed to say and when.

It also contained two photos: one of the couple, who he assumed were his parents, sitting stoically in a portrait studio. His mother stood behind his father, her hands resting on his left shoulder. The social worker told him it was probably their wedding photo, and that they had probably saved up for weeks to have the picture made. 

Race remarked that they didn’t look too pleased to be getting married, but the social worker just laughed and took the photo back, placing it away for safekeeping in his file. All of the boys at St. Ignatius had a file they weren’t supposed to touch, with things in it like family documents and photos. Some with small sums of money. Race wasn’t that lucky. 

The other photo was a picture of his parents on the deck of a ship, their faces relaxed, his father’s arm around his mother. A little boy stood in front of them, his face blurred, as though he had moved too quickly at the last moment to capture his face.

If Race squinted and turned the photo to the right-hand side, he could see that his mother’s belly was swollen. And he was inside.

It was proof that his family had once existed intact, if only for a brief moment.

 The neighbor had written a letter to go in his file, but the words were all jumbled and spelled wrong.

_“Anthonee. From apertment 56. Mum ded from given birth to him. Dad, gona dye frum kolera. No monie fer medycin. I taken him here n his brother ‘s’ at Sainte Inayses. Good luck, Anthonee. God bless ya.”_

The neighbor had signed her name as “Margrit Higens,” which the Foundling Hospital determined meant “Margaret Higgins.” Without a surname left from his parents, Higgins was the name they gave him. An Italian boy with an Irish last name. 

They had never been able to find his brother to reunite the pair. He was old enough for to transfer to St. Ignatius, Paolo had already been put on an Orphan Train to Missouri. Race wrote to him once he learned his letters well enough to try it, sending it to the last address they had listed for him. It was care of a P. Smyth in a place called Boonville.

His letter came back unopened in the post call one rainy July day, and he spent the rest of the week with his heart so heavy he could swear he felt it in his boots.

Every night before he closed his eyes, amid the coughs and whines of the other boys, he pictured his big brother, probably called Paul now, riding a midnight black horse through the open prairie. Race bet he even met Native Americans and watched them perform their foreign religion amid firelight.

Race pictured himself on a chestnut-colored horse next to his Imaginary Brother, the pair of them riding bareback through a field, their feet bare and muddy. In these dreams, there were no nuns to slap his wrist for holding his pencil in the wrong hand, no older boys to slam him into the wall and corner him for being the smallest one of his age group, no Father Michael making his way into the bunk at night to pull the boys away to their quarters.

Luckily, that hadn’t happened to Race, but he heard strange stories about worms in pants and weird tasting liquid. He didn’t know what it meant, but all of the boys who reported back said it was awful. He prayed it he wouldn’t happen to him. And they all tried to avoid Father Michael in confession if they could help it, though Race had had him a few times and it had been pretty standard.

Each night, he prayed to St. Jude, the patron saint of lost causes, and St. Nicholas, the patron saint of children, for two things: that he would go out west one day and meet his big brother, Paul, and that Father Michael wouldn’t ever pull him out of bed at night.

Father Michael seemed to only rouse fair boys with blonde hair and freckles over their noses, the ones whose parents had come from Ireland and Germany and Poland and Czechloslovakia. So, it seemed, St. Jude and St. Nicholas were watching over him.

And out of the blue, it seemed that his dreams of reuniting with his brother had come true as well when he had been recommended for an Orphan Train going to Kansas. Further proof that the nuns were right: perpetual prayer to the saints worked.

He had been placed on a list with most of the children his age who were true orphans. They were to get out of the overcrowded city, and sent into the arms of strangers out west. Where there was room. Where there were families missing children like Race. 

Although the term orphanage would suggest that all of the children were missing parents, it wasn’t entirely the case. Instead, many of the children had unwed mothers who placed them there, the young women still checking up on them when they could, promising that one day they’d be able to live together in a beautiful apartment.

  
Some even had aunts and uncles who lived in New York City, or in other states. After they were set up, they’d come to check the charges out of the orphanage, bringing them to a whole new life with their surrogate parents. 

Then there were the kids who had parents, but they were drunks or prostitutes, those who could see their children every once in a while, but were barred from full custody.

Racetrack, or Anthony as he was known then, was a true orphan. With both his parents confirmed dead, he was a prime candidate for the Orphan Train. With parents still alive, one needed to sign for them to take the train, even if they were drunks or prostitutes or unwed mothers. Without them, it was the one time Race felt as though it made him untethered and free. 

For months, he and his best friend, Tommy Sorrento, planned what they would do when they got to Kansas.

They told Sister Elizabeth, who was in charge of the list from St. Ignatius, that they wanted to go to a foster home together. He was sure there was one who wanted two strong boys instead of just one. Maybe they'd even be Italian, like him and Tommy, and they'd want to carry on their traditions, so they'd ask for two scruffy kids from the country.

At first, she laughed at him, noting his stature was much more demure than most of the boys his age, but then she tried to cover it and bite back her amusement.

“I’ll make note of that, Anthony,” she nodded, closing her eyes and patting him on the head.

He smiled, telling Tommy they were sure to go to a family who had always wanted sons but kept having girls. So now, they’d get the two of them to come to save the day. And they’d be so happy to have them, they’d give them two pitch black horses, named Midnight and Coal, respectively, like the one he dreamed about his brother riding. Sometimes the horse he rode in daydreams would be a light brown, dubbed Chestnut. But it didn't matter. It was the feeling he craved...of running toward a future open with possibilities. Of not being bound to anyone or thing. True liberation.

And one day, they’d find Paolo, and the three of them would strike out on their own on the plains, eventually marrying and having their own families and farmsteads. He told Tommy he'd like to marry a Catholic girl who wanted to have seven boys so they could make a good living on the farm. So they could spread out as wide as they wanted, not like in New York where you couldn't breathe for bumping into someone else.

He and Tommy spent hours poring over maps of Kansas from the schoolroom, tracing their route and discussing what they’d do the moment they got there, how they'd give a big Indian-like whoop into the vast openness. How fresh the air would smell. How blue the sky would be.

“I heard ya can see the stars,” Tommy told his friend, brushing his sandy brown hair from his face. “All of ‘em. Not like here where it’s all fogged up.”

Race smiled.

“Ya reckon one of ‘em is our parents?”

Tommy nodded but then broke into a smile, showing off his missing front tooth. “Don’t be a sap.”

After a beat, he grinned again. “Yeah, they’re our folks.” 

The pair had been looking forward to the day for months, but about a week before they were set to leave, Race started to feel not quite himself.

His throat started to hurt, but he didn’t say anything to the nuns or Father Michael. Instead, he drank lots of tea whenever he could get his hands on it.

Then, he started to feel a bit delirious, then suddenly exhausted.

  
Two days before they were set to leave, he had a rash up and down his chest. He tried to hide it with his towel during their washing period, but Sister Roberta, who had been stationed to supervise the boys as they bathed to make sure they got behind their ears, spotted it with her eagle eyes. Nothing ever got passed her, evidently, not even scarlet fever. 

“Anthony Higgins, come here immediately!” she howled.

Her voice was high-pitched. So high-pitched, some of the boys joked that only a dog could hear it. 

Wordlessly, she took some of Race’s nightclothes and escorted him to the infirmary.

“But, I feel fine,” he lied, barely choking the words out.

“You’re contagious,” she corrected him, keeping him at an arm’s length and digging into her habit for the keys to the infirmary.

“But…I gotta go to Kansas next week…” 

Sister Roberta looked him over. 

“With that rash, you’re not going anywhere.”

In a whirlwind, he was checked into the infirmary with four other boys with similar rashes and symptoms for company. The nuns flitted about, administering medicine and fluids. He thought he remembered the doctor coming by at one point. Maybe someone rubbed lotion on his back where it itched the most. 

Before he knew it, Race finally gave into his symptoms, his delirium taking over. The next few days were passed in a haze of feverish dreams of him and Tommy on Midnight or Coal or Chestnut, racing through the pitch back night toward a Native American camp. Or visions of eating hearty dinners of cornmeal and pancakes before his foster mother ushering the boys to bed and kissing them on the forehead. He imagined she smelled of the perfume Sister Beth sometimes wore, even though he knew Sister Roberta told her off for it. 

By the time he was finally lucid, everything had changed. It was like he was Rip Van Winkle and had awoken from his spell, to find he had slept for 100 years. 

Really, it had only been a few days, but it might have well been 100 years to Race. 

“When’s the train?” he murmured, his eyes thick with sleep as he struggled to open them.

He found that Sister Beth stood over him now, he pink rosebud of a mouth pursed, some of her reddish blonde hair escaping her wimple. But she was not his foster mother in Kansas.

“Oh, Anthony!” she smiled. “You look so much better.”

She moved her hand to his forehead.

“Your fever’s down, almost broken,” she grinned. “We weren’t sure you’d make it through a few days ago. But the doctor says now you’re on the way to recovering.” 

Race sat up in his bed. But as he did so, the faces of the other boys in the cots next to him looked like the time Sister Roberta had brought a kaleidoscope to their lessons and he had his turn looking through it. His head felt like he'd been on a ferry too long. 

“Go steady,” Sister Beth said, sitting on the edge of his bed. “Don’t move too fast. You’re still a sick little boy, we just know you’ve gotten through the worst of it.”

“W-what about the train to Kansas?” 

“Hmm?” Sister Beth asked, her eyebrows knotting together. She then lit up with a look of recognition. “Oh, that’s right, you were supposed to be on the train that left on Saturday.”

“It’s left?” Race nearly jumped up. As soon as he moved, the entire room started to spin, and Sister Beth seemed to have two heads all of a sudden. 

“Well, yes. It is Tuesday.”

“Did Tommy Sorrento go?”

Sister Beth considered it for a moment before momentarily looking crestfallen. 

“Tommy’s your best buddy, isn’t he?”

Race nodded. 

“I’m afraid he did,” Sister Beth told him after a long pause. She studied her hands, as though it might absolve some of the guilt she felt in not letting the pair say their final goodbyes. 

Race sunk into his pillows, the pain in his chest like he’d been hit by a bullet. It slowly spread across it, like the blood pouring from the wound. He couldn’t catch his breath.

“I didn’t….I didn’t get to say goodbye,” he muttered as he rolled over to face the wall. He wanted to stay in the bed forever, never to have to get up to a world where there was no Kansas, no Tommy, and no Midnight or Coal or Chestnut. 

"I'm..." Sister Beth said stroking his back. He shrugged her off and she pulled her hand back to her side. "I'm afraid you were very contagious. We couldn't have Tommy here." 

After a beat, she handed him a cup of water next to his bed. 

"Drink this, Anthony. You need your strength."

But he burrowed his head under the pillow, angry at Sister Beth for letting Tommy leave without him. Angry at God for letting him get sick. Angry at his parents for dying and leaving him here alone. Angry at Paolo for taking his chance to go out west. 

He prayed in his head to St. Jude that he’d see the boy that was like his brother again. _Please, St. Jude. Please let me see Tommy again. It ain’t fair._  

Another family member lost. Another family member gone without even the exchange of a goodbye.

It was as though he were surrounded by phantoms, people who meant everything to him and left without a trace.

From that moment on, he vowed he would never get close to anyone else. He'd strike out on his own. Always. Him against the world. 

And if he somehow managed to break that promise and accidentally get close to someone else, he’d hold them so tight he’d never lose them.

 


	6. Cowboy to the Rescue

**1902**

 

The day after Fiona’s father had showed up at the Lodging House had been a Sunday, the one day they didn’t sell. It was supposed to be the one day they got to be kids, playing cards, going to the theater or simply sitting around with one another and talking. Things always felt lighter, and more possible on Sundays, less serious, less of a grind to stay alive. 

But Race and Skittery spent most of the day in bed nursing their hangovers. They had slept until as late as possible before the racket of the rest of the boys woke them. The sun had climbed high in the sky by then, peering through an open window and making Race groan as he tried to turn away from it.

Fiona looked in on him a couple of times, but seemed more preoccupied with her girlfriends than Race’s condition. Not that he could blame her, he did do it to himself after all. And he had broken down crying like a whiny child when he should have been comforting her. After all, it was her condition that caused his mother to leave this Earth.

The thought made him shiver, so he pushed it out of his head.  

By dinner, Race and Skittery had both collected themselves enough to make their way to the table, gingerly pushing their soups around their bowls and nibbling on bread to keep their stomachs settled.

Fiona kissed Race on the cheek as she and the girls set off to go to the Sunday evening church service. While the kids in the Lodging House certainly were rough around the edges, the Catholic Church, for better or worse, had been a central player in many of their lives. Like the way he and Fiona held on to each other for dear life, many of them held on to the Bible and its teachings and their Sunday worship services, even if it did mean they had to tally up all of their sins and report them on Sundays.

 He silently wondered if Fiona had been confessing all of the times they’d been together, and if she’d tell the priest as she sat behind the screen tonight that she was having a baby with some street rat she wasn’t married to. Or maybe she'd already told him the minute she suspected.  

Race didn’t go to church as often as Fiona did, but sometimes he’d accompany her and make his confessions and take communion to appease her. He sometimes found the incense and theatricality of the service comforting, like a security blanket. One of the few stable memories of his broken childhood.

When he went into confession and stared at the screen at the priest, he always left out his lustful thoughts and activities. Even though it was all supposed to be anonymous, it made him nauseous to think about sharing something special that was just between him and Fiona with the veiled pastor. Instead, he brought up his gambling, his cursing and spitting. 

He would say the Hail Marys and Our Fathers, telling God and the Virgin he was sorry for the things he had done with Fiona under the cover of night when they were alone. And for the thoughts he had about her and other girls that weren't Fiona. But he couldn’t help but feel like he really wasn’t all that sorry for it. If it made him feel good, how could it be so awful?

After the girls left in their Sunday dresses, their heels sounding like the soft beats of horse hooves down the cobblestones, Race pulled on his hat and began lacing up his shoes.

“You off?” Skittery asked him, rubbing his hands through his hair. He had been sick at least three times today. Race had, at least, kept it down. “Going to ask forgiveness for last night?”

Race smirked, tying his laces into a knot.

“Naw, I’m…I’m gonna pay Jack a visit,” he nodded at his friend. “Fiona says drink lots a’ water after you been drinkin’. Where’s your girl at to take care a' you anyway? What was her name? Frances ‘er somethin’ like that?”

Skittery laughed.

He and Kid Blink, another one of the newsies in the Lodging House, both seemed to have trouble holding onto a girl. They’d date here and there, sometimes a couple for a month or two at a time. Then the girls would vanish into thin air as if they never existed.

But, they did happen to have rather creative ways of finding places to be alone with the girls, which the boys who had more serious girlfriends took advantage of. It was Kid Blink who had alerted Race to the empty school room. And Kid Blink who sometimes folded a bill over the lock so Kloppman couldn't shut it.  

In some ways, Race envied Skittery’s free spirit. He wasn’t tied down like some of the other boys were, whether they were married or not. He was free to follow any lead, no girl, no little one that was going to depend on him in a few months. 

Through Skittery and Blink, the boys who were tied down lived out their “wild oat” fantasies, telling them which pretty girls to ask out and asking about how far they’d managed to get with them.

But if Race wasn’t tied down, he wouldn’t have a Fiona to remind him to drink water or to kiss him when his head hurt, even if he didn’t deserve it. He wouldn’t have someone to wake up for and someone to protect, someone to hold him calm through the storm. He wouldn't have the one thing in his life that had always been there. 

Naw, he’d rather have his wife-to-be than a thousand other pretty girls coming and going.

“Yeah, Frances,” Skittery nodded sincerely. “She was nice, I guess. But I think she started seein’ her boss at the factory. An’ he’s married. Girl like that, she ain’t no good. I gotta find me someone a bit more dependable and faithful.”

“Sure,” Race smirked. “I’m sure ‘faithful’ and ‘dependable’ are the two qualities you’re really looking for in a woman.”

“Shut up,” Skittery laughed playfully punching at his friend.

The two play-wrestled for a moment before Race threw his hands up in surrender.

“I’ll see ya later tonight.” 

Skittery nodded, groaning at his hangover headache, as if it had just come on again. 

“I’se gettin’ old,” he murmured. “Still feelin’ sick the next night.”

“You didn’t exactly go easy,” Race called as he made his way downstairs and into the evening air. 

It was strange, upside down even to be greeting the day for the first time in the evening, the smell of fireplaces and chatter of immigrants in as many different languages as Race imagined there were in the background of his thoughts.

The apartment Jack shared with Hannah was only a ten-minute walk away from the Lodging House, but it felt like an eternity when you’d grown up sleeping next to someone most of your life. And while Jack still sold newspapers part-time, Race silently worried that his new life as a printing apprentice would stretch him even further from the group of newsboys.

 Would Race and Fiona become their own little world one day? Would they all be merely planets orbiting one another instead of intersecting?

He didn’t like the thought at all, so he pushed it in the back of his mind, just like the one about his mother bleeding out, as he climbed up to the fourth floor of the apartment building Jack lived in. On his way, he met children screeching in Yiddish and Italian and German, the sound of a man moaning, the smell of the bathroom on one of the floors as a young man about his age waltzed out of it as though nothing had happened in there.

Fiona had come from this, and now he was about to take her right back.

At least Jack had been thrifty. Although he and Hannah were living here at the moment, surrounded by the din and filth and noise, he did disclose to his closest friends that he had been saving up and was going to move them outside the city soon.

The thought of one of his best friends not being a short walk away was absolutely terrifying, but he knew his little family deserved something better than this.

Race got to the door of Jack’s apartment and knocked on it, lighting a cigarette and hoping silently that Hannah’d gone to church with the girls. She hadn’t always been well after having her baby, sometimes spending days in bed staring at the wall. Jack confessed sometimes nothing could get her up and he was at his wit’s end with her. He even confessed to Race once he wished he had married Sarah, the girl he had thought he had fallen in love with during the Strike. But her father had wanted her to marry a banker or a lawyer, someone with actual possibilities in his life, not Jack. The rejection had crushed Jack for a few months, but once Hannah had caught his attention, with her loud unbecoming laugh and piercing blue eyes and long sandy-colored curls, it was like Sarah never existed. 

That is, until Hannah went into her dark place, falling into a tunnel so far away not even Jack could pull her out.

Other times, it was like Hannah was a different person, back to her bubbly old self again. Fiona had told her the same thing had happened to her mother, and to come get her if she ever needed. But between work and Hannah not leaving the bed, there wasn’t a spare minute to ever get her more than a few times.

“Heya, Race,” Jack grinned, opening the door to his friend.

He was holding his daughter in his right arm, her screams echoing through the apartment, and now down the hall, as she attempted to rock her. 

“How’s Miss Ida today?” Race asked, looking at the red-faced child whose face was strewn with tears.

“How’s she look?” Jack joked. “She saw you and then this tantrum set in.”

Race rolled his eyes and took another drag of his cigarette, stepping into his friend’s apartment. The kitchen area, at least, was much tidier than Fiona had described it before when Hannah was last having one of her episodes. The curtains were washed and the dishes put away.

“Maybe she wants Uncle Race?” Race grinned extending his arms to the crying little girl.

“Ya think she wants that face in her's?” Jack laughed, but handed her over. Anything to stop the incessant screaming in his ear for more than a few seconds.

With one hand Race held his cigarette and balanced Ida in his other arm. 

“I’m a natural,” he grinned as he bounced her up and down. Within a few moments, her screams started to lessen to hiccups as she curiously pawed at Race’s pocket watch. 

“Hey, no accounting for taste,” Jack laughed. “If you wanna stay here all night and keep her company, I ain't going to say no, but what brings ya here?”

He took a seat at the sparse dining room table he and Hannah ate their dinners on, when she wasn’t in one of her moods. It had been draped with lace-like linen and an old tin can with the label peeled off held two wildflowers in it.

“Hannah at church?” 

“Yessir,” he nodded. “I’m on baby duty. If it makes her happy to get out and see her girlfriends and keeps her head outta da clouds, I ain’t gonna say no."  

Race nodded at took a drag, still holding Ida. He was surprised at how quickly his arm ached while he held her chubby body, especially since she was so small. But he was also surprised at how nice it felt to have her in his arms.

“Well, I’m here ta talk to you,” Race bit his lip, his voice lowering.

“This don’t sound good,” Jack put his face on his hands, staring intently at his friend. “What is it?”

“Well, Fiona and I are getting married,” he nodded. “Gonna talk to the priest to make definite plans, but probably in the next coupla’ weeks.” 

Jack grinned. 

“Finally. I’ll make sure me church outfit’s ready, then,” he playfully slapped his friend on the face before running his hand over his daughter’s cheek. She cooed and playfully pulled on Race’s pocket watch chain. 

“Glad you’ll be there,” Race exhaled a smoke ring into the space between them. 

“So…why don’t you sound excited? You’ve been in love wit’ dis girl since you was 12. You used to sit there denying it with ya face all red when we told ya you was in love with her, you remember?” Jack smiled at the memory.

When Fiona first came into the Lodging House, everyone could see immediately how Race had treated her differently, like she was a porcelain vase. It wasn't the way he’d ever treated anyone before or since. He was glued to her side, making sure she was okay, spotting her money if she didn’t have enough at the end of the week, and sometimes sitting with her in the lobby of the bunkhouse when she had night terrors. 

When the boys were alone and someone brought her up, they’d all turn to Race and ruffle his hair, his face going bright red.

“Naw, she’s just a good friend,” he would protest.

“Good friend, huh?” Jack and Kid Blink would mimic him while grabbing at his shoulders and egging him on until his face was an even deeper shade of crimson. 

“I am excited,” Race nodded. “I planned on proposing to her on her birthday this year.” 

“But Fi’s birthday’s in da summer, next ta mine. A few months away. So what happened?”

Race looked at Ida, who now had the fingers from her right hand in her mouth, her big blue eyes looking up at him as she snuggled up on his shoulder. Her eyes were piercing, the same icy blue as her mother's.

Jack nodded.

“Ah,” he smirked. “You got yourself in the same situation I did. What’d I always tell ya boys? Do as I say, not as I do, right?”

Race let out a laugh as he pulled Ida closer to him. He could feel his vest becoming soiled in dribble, but he tried to ignore it, knowing he was going to have to get used to it soon enough. Jack noticed and reflexively pulled one of the cloths from the table and wiped her mouth. 

It almost stunned Race to see such a change in Jack. From the womanizing teenager who was in and out of trouble to a family man saving up for a house outside of the city in just a few short months. If time could change him, maybe it could change Race, too.

“Well, I didn’t shtup her in a bush in Central Park,” Race laughed tapping his ashes into the tin can next to the flowers that served as an ashtray for the household. “I do have some class.”

“I admit, not one of my most romantic moments,” Jack laughed holding his hands up in a surrender motion. “But sometimes you just gotta go where the spirit moves you.”

Race rolled his eyes at his friend and let out a laugh before sucking in his cigarette again and becoming quiet again. Ida was rallying on his shoulder, trying to fight sleep as she cooed to herself.  

“So, you scared a bein’ a dad?” Jack asked, his hands supporting his chin as he looked from his daughter to his friend. "It's not dat hard, once ya see 'em, you love 'em." 

“Yeah,” Race admitted. “But there’s another problem.”

“Oh?”

“I’se lost most of the money I was saving up to propose,” he swallowed hard, looking down at his hand now in his lap.

It was the first time he had said the words out loud. And now, it was real, concrete. The money was really gone, divided into the hands of hundreds of gamblers and bookies all over the city.

“How?” Jack asked, incredulous. He knew his friend had been saving up for years for the house he and Fiona fantasized about all of the time. He had bragged up and down he wouldn’t ever move into a tenement like every other newsie. He’d take his bride straight to a real house, with a private front door and a garden. And a private bathtub so the two of them could soak in it alone together whenever they wanted to. “You get robbed?”

“Naw,” Race said, snuffing out his cigarette in the ashtray. “I gambled it all away.”

“All of it?” 

“Most of it…” 

“Race, you’re an idiot,” Jack groaned running his hands through his greasy hair again. When they were younger, he used to fidget with the cowboy hat he wore around his neck, but that had been hung up on the wall now, a reminder of childhood dreams that weren’t meant to come true. 

“Okay, okay, lemme explain…” 

“It ain’t me you gotta explain to,” Jack shook his head. 

Race looked down at his feet. Ida had gone completely limp on his shoulder and Jack stood up, extending his arms to her once again. He kissed her blond curls and quietly moved to place her in the bassinet that sat in the kitchen with them, not far from the table. Everything was so close together in New York, like you couldn't turn around without moving into something, not the way Race wanted to raise his kids.

Jack tucked Ida in with the off-white blanket Race recognized one of the girls at the Lodging House had knitted for them before they left.

 “I know,” Race took off his hat and placed it on the table. “But I had a plan. I thought if I could triple or quadruple it, I could get us a house by August. And I could get Fi a diamond engagement ring from Tiffany’s.”

Jack turned on his heel and tiptoed toward his friend. He almost burst out laughing, but then stopped himself as he studied Race’s face and saw it was completely serious.

“You was gonna buy her a ring from Tiffany’s?” Jack asked. “You really thought you was gonna do that?”

Race shrugged sitting back in his chair and tipping it back slightly. 

“I saw her looking at it once in the display case when we was sellin’ together. The shop lady came out and told her to get out the way, said it was bad for business to have street kids like us lookin’ in the fancy shop window. So, I said ta myself I was gonna get it for her when I asked her to marry me. I only needed ta triple my money, I was on a winning streak for a bit there. ‘Sides, don’tcha think she deserves it?” 

“For puttin’ up wid you, yeah, but her deserving it and being able ta have it are two different things. You thinks Kloppman deserves to be workin’ like he is as an old man? You thinks Hannah don’t deserve a fancy ring like that, too?” 

Race shrugged. 

“But she’s…Fiona.”

“Yeah, she’s Fiona. An Irish immigrant girl, knocked up ‘fore she’s married, carryin’ your baby. And you is a broke Italian kid wid an Irish last name who thinks he can double his money and get her a ring from Tiffany’s like she’s da Queen a Sheba.”

“I’m an idiot,” Race put his head in his hands.

 “Yeah you are. ‘Sides, how long did you think you two’d have dat ring ‘fore someone stole it from her or she sold it so you’d keep da heatin’ on through the winter?”

“I didn’t think a that,” Race shook his head.

 “Time ta grow up, Race,” Jack gestured toward Ida. “Ya gonna have two people dat need you now.”

Race took a deep breath and then moved his ink-stained hand to his face.

“How am I gonna get us enough money to leave the Lodging House in a few weeks? Nobody’s ever kept livin’ dere after they got married….ya think at ya apprenticeship dey could take me on as a clean’ah or somethin’? Maybe I could work at Sheepshead, shoveling up the horse shit…Least they kinda know me there.”

Jack paused and chewed on his lip. He looked from his daughter to Race, and then stared for a moment into the gas lamp the dimly lit his apartment as though it might hold the answer to his friend's conundrum.

“I tell ya what,” he took a deep breath. “I’ll ask the press if they need a clean'ah, you ask Sheepshead if ya can shovel shit, and I’ll give you $5. That’s a little more than a month’s rent in one a these places in dis type a buildin', aight?”

“Jack, you gotta be kidding…”

“Naw,” he ducked his face down lower, as though they were sharing a secret. “We’re practically brothers, aight? But, you gotta pay me back. Dis is strictly on loan. You work and give me da money back as soon as possible." 

“Jack…I don’t know what to say,” Race grinned, the pain in his chest he didn’t even know he had suddenly alleviating.

“Don’t say nothin’,” he said. “Especially not to Fi or Hannah, aight? Just between us. Think of it as an advanced wedding present. But one ya gotta give back."

“Just between us,” Race repeated.

Jack spit in his hand and Race did the same. The pair clasped hands and shook on it, sealing the deal between them.

 

 

 

 


	7. Dennis

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> During the turn of the 20th century, "a Bridget" was slang for an Irish maid. It was because so many Irish women were maids, and so many of them called Bridget, that they were often referred to as "Bridgets."

**Christmas 1892**

 

Fiona was 8 when she learned that grown-up lives are much more difficult, and less easily defined than what she learned about in school.

Yes, the teacher talks about what the boys will be when they grow up, the number of children the girls will have, and so on. For children, there’s little in between when it comes to imaging life as an adult, but for adults, that’s all there is, the in between.

Fiona’s father had left to visit her aunt and uncle in Boston for a pre-Christmas meal that had caused the argument in the first place. Her father had wanted to take her with him, but for her mother, this was the busiest time of the year for wanting socks mended and tablecloths washed.

During Christmas time, her father wasn’t as put off by her mother picking up extra work, as everyone needed a little bit more during the festive season. Every morning before Fiona was even up at the end of November through to the beginning of January, her mother would trudge uptown to help a friend of a friend who worked as a maid in one of them fancy houses shine the silver and ready the home for the festive season. 

“I can’t miss work,” her mother had said to her father, thinking their voices were safely tucked behind their bedroom door. “Mrs. Strauss needs everyone she can get, all the Bridgets in town. But there’s a line of women like me out the door who can do the job if I don’t show up one day. We need this.” 

Her father shuffled his feet in a moment of consideration.

“I can take Fi and leave ya behind then,” his voice booming. “Paddy and Alma haven’t seen the girl for ages, not since she were four. They want to see her.” 

The thought of being alone with her father briefly terrified the girl, and the addition sums she was supposed to be working on seemed to slip off of her slate she had so carefully copied that morning in class.

Her father wasn’t always harsh and awful. In fact, he could be pretty kind. Sometimes he’d sit and teach her to play cards or give her sweets or go over the names of the saints with Fiona at night. But it was when the drink hit that he became this whole other person, one who was all fists and mouth, swallowing the man who listed the saints with her whole.

He couldn’t stay away from his whiskey, not even for a couple of days. He told her he needed it to fall asleep at night, but her mother said he needed it to go to the factory, for lunch and for dinner as well.

“I’m not letting you take her alone, Michael,” her mother said. Fiona could picture her shaking her head in a rare moment of defiance.

“What’s the supposed to mean?” his footsteps moved closer to her mother’s voice.

“You cain’t stay away from ya drink fer more t'an a few hours. What happens if ya lose her at the station? What happens if ya nod off and miss yer stop?”

“I won’t,” he vowed. 

“I won’t let you,” it was a whisper, but to Fiona, it was as mighty as any roar.

Fiona braced herself for impact by putting her hands over her ears. 

A moment later there was what sounded like gurgling noises, and fists against the wall. And then a gasp of air before the door opened and father brushed passed her, not even acknowledging her.

He slammed the door behind him, not to be seen for a few more days, as predicted when he was angry. 

Her mother appeared from their bedroom, her eyes watering, her hands opening and closing. 

“You okay mum?” Fiona asked, her sums seemingly less important now. 

“Mmmhmm,” she nodded. Then she smiled, throwing her shoulders back. “Let me make you some tea. I’ll braid your hair and we’ll get ready for bed. Maybe read a story from the Bible?” 

Fiona nodded, moving to the linen cupboard to get her pallet and quilt ready for the night, her mother pretending like what had happened had never occurred. And for Fiona, not talking about it was almost worse.

But when Fiona learned this valuable lesson about how your ma isn’t just your ma, and you don’t just become a wife and mother and live happily ever after, it was 5 days later. 

Somehow, her mother had successfully talked her father out of taking her with him to Boston, which both relieved and disappointed Fiona. She was curious about this other family living there. Were they kind, or did they drink barrels of whiskey like her da? Or were they kind and the whiskey made them mean?

Did they have Irish accents or were they American like her? Did the children who were around the same age as she was like to recite poems and sing, too? She would never know, but at least she got her mother to herself in those cold days leading up to Christmas. 

Fiona had fallen asleep in her parents’ bed, snuggled under what seemed like all of the blankets they owned. Her mother had stoked the fire in the bedroom, the sound of the crinkling of the logs lulling Fiona to sleep. And although she never got much for Christmas, the air in New York always smelled just a little bit different then. It was less sour and more like cinnamon and roast chestnuts, which cheered Fiona up, even if Santa sometimes only gave her an orange or a pair of gloves for her doll.

 

She was woken up with a start by the feeling of furry feet on her face.

Sleepily, she tried to move them out of the way, but once she was fully awake, she could see it was Lady, the outdoor cat that she had grown so fond of. Some of the neighbors allowed her into their homes and gave her milk and tuna fish. Her mother was not one of them, and instead was convinced Lady had fleas or any other number of diseases.

“Shhh,” Fiona stroked Lady’s ginger face. “Don’t make any noise and you can stay here for a bit longer.”

Lady rubbed herself against Fiona’s off-white nightgown sleeve, tickling her arm. It made Fiona giggle in spite of herself, as she sleepily scratched the top of her head. 

“You can, Margaret!” the sentence was final and harsh, punctuated with the sound of a hand on the wobbly wooden table.

The words were harsh, but not angry, not the way her father’s words could be. They were exasperated, and insistent. And the voice was male, but not her father’s. In fact, not Irish at all.

Fiona put her finger to her lips to ensure Lady refrained from meowing. Fiona hadn’t even stopped to consider how she could have entered the little room when all of the windows were shut…instead, she was more curious as to who the voice belonged to. 

“Dennis, I can’t,” her mother answered. Her words were defeated.

Dennis. The man Fiona had always wished her father was like. With his funny bow tie and bowler hat, he was a social worker who often called in on the tenants to make sure the children in the building were all right. His grandmother, he said, was Irish, and he had made it his mission to ensure the Irish children of the city were looked after.

But it seemed he paid special attention to Fiona and her mother, ensuring her mother was looked after most of all. The pair sometimes shared sidelong glances, or her mother laughed a little bit too hard at his jokes that fell flat. He often stopped by on a Friday night, knowing her father was likely to be out drinking, just to make sure the two were doing okay for the week.

As an eight-year-old, it seemed like he had just taken a shine to the woman and her daughter. And why not? Her mother could sing like an angel and knew the New Testament like the back of her hand. She deserved for someone to look after her when her father wasn’t taking proper care of her.

More often than not, he stayed for the Friday fish dinner her mother cooked, eating the meal her father should have eaten, and listening to Fiona and her mother harmonize Irish folk songs. His blue eyes always had light behind them, except when he explained that his own wife, Marianna, had died five years earlier. 

Fiona pressed her ear to the door, and Lady tiptoed toward her, stealth on her paws.

“Did he do that to you?” Dennis asked her. 

It wasn’t like him to be over so late. And it wasn’t like her mother to be in the presence of men unaccompanied so late either. Fiona’s heart thudded, thinking it must be a real emergency if Dennis was here at such an hour.

There was a pause between them, that even Fiona could tell was tense.

“Did he do that to you?” Dennis insistently asked again.

Fiona knew he was referring to the yellowing bruise around her mother’s neck from the Christmas Boston argument.

“Yes,” her mother’s voice was meek, childlike.

“There you have it!” he almost yelled, like a character in a children’s mystery play Fiona had seen at school who finally found the answer to the crime he was solving.

“Have what?” 

“Grounds!” his voice was still raised an octave above his normal one.

“Shhhh,” her mother hissed. She could picture her waving her hand, the way she did when she was trying to quiet Fiona. “Fi’s asleep.” 

“Margaret, you have grounds,” he said again. “You can divorce your husband if you have proof.”

“And what are they goin’ ta say? Ya sure ya didn’t do that at work? Ya sure ya accidentally didn’t get caught in somethin’?”

“Margaret,” he stated, his voice like a child opening a Christmas present. “Almost all courts say beating your wife is illegal. And it’s grounds to leave him. But only if you have proof. And if you go with me to get it photographed, you have it. It's obvious it's hand marks."

There was a silence again.

“And what would I do if I left Michael, Dennis?”

“You’d live with me,” Dennis answered without missing a beat.

“But we ain’t married. And I have Fiona, who I ain’t leavin’ wit him alone under no circumstances. And you’re all fancy, finished school and went to college,” she retorted. 

Dennis didn’t miss a beat this time either, as if he’d waited his whole life to spill this plan he’d hatched. 

“I’ve got an extra room. You and Fiona can live there until your divorce is final. Then, we can get married, and I’ll raise Fiona like she’s my own. She can have her own bedroom, not a pallet on the floor. And I’ll make sure she finishes school, even if she falls in love with some goon that tries to squirrel her away from it, and, which you know one will if she grows up half as lovely as her mother, and—“ 

“But why?” her mother’s answer was barely above a whisper as a counter to Dennis’ nervous babbles.

“Margaret, you’re many, many things. But I never thought you were this daft,” he laughed a little bit. 

“What do you mean?”

“Can’t you tell that I love you? That I’ve always loved you. And from that, I grew to love Fiona like a daughter, and…”

There was a moment of silence before Lady clawed her way up Fiona’s body and flung herself onto the doorknob. If it hadn’t been at such an awful moment, the gymnastics would have been impressive. As the cat hung onto the doorknob, it turned it, opening the door to the common room and catching her mother and Dennis kissing square on the mouth.

Fiona’s face turned red, but it couldn’t have been nearly as colorful as her mother’s, which was now as dark as the tomatos she sometimes sent Fiona to buy from the stalls at the markets. 

“Oh, Fi girl, I told you that I don’t want that horrible cat in ‘ere!” her mother’s voice was barely above a whisper before she grew a little bit of courage. 

“Out of here ya dumb cat!” 

She opened the door to shoo it out, before grabbing her broom and making sweeping motions at it before it finally made its way into the hallway.

“Her name is Lady,” Fiona answered, not knowing what to say. Dennis couldn’t catch her eye, his own hands in his lap and his eyes fixated on them.

“I don’t care if she’s the Virgin herself, I don’t want her in here, is that understood?” 

Fiona nodded.

“Sorry, ma,” she answered.

“Anyway, Dennis was just leaving,” her mother announced. 

“I was?”

“Yes,” she nodded. “Thank you for the extra work, but I t’ink it’s time he made his way home now. It’s not appropriate for a woman who ain’t married to be alone wit’ a man who she ain’t married to.” 

Dennis stood up and put his hat and coat into his hands, twisting them nervously between them.

“You’ll think about what I said?”

Her mother nodded. 

“Yes, I will.” 

But that was the third to last time Fiona ever saw Dennis. And for the rest of her life, she often sat on the Lodging House bed wondering what her life would have been like had her mother taken him up, or had she known his surname.

Would it have been worth it to never marry Race?

The grown-up Fiona looked back on that night and didn’t know, but she did know that it was the night she learned that the world is polluted with all shades of gray between anything that seems black and white.

And nothing’s black and white, except newspapers.

 

 


	8. Race's Dream

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains graphic description of a birth gone wrong. Skip this chapter if that's too much for you.

**1901**

Racetrack smiled from ear to ear as he spread the blanket he’d pilfered from the clean laundry onto the hot, thirsty Central Park grass. He smoothed the colorless linen over with his hands before gesturing for Fiona to sit on it with him.

“Well,” Fiona smiled. “When you told me to pack a picnic for us, I didn’t realize you were taking me somewhere fancy.”

He grinned.

“Nothing too good for you.”

He took the picnic basket from her hand and helped her sit down on the blanket, his hand supporting her back as she finally let the ground take her weight.

“I can sit myself, Race,” she laughed. “I’m just up the duff, not crippled.”

She whispered the words “up the duff,” looking around at the nearby park patrons and making sure no one had heard her utter such a vulgar phrase, especially with a man who wasn’t yet her husband.

“I know, I know,” he grinned, taking off his flatcap and setting it down next to him. He unbuttoned his shirtsleeves and rolled them up over his elbows. “I just want to make sure you’re all right.”

Fiona nodded, opening the picnic basket and clinking some of the dishes they’d borrowed from the Lodging House to help contribute to their faux middle-class picnic.

In the past couple of weeks, as the pair planned their wedding and life together in the shallow breaks between work, Race had oscillated between being an overbearing mother hen-type to almost not caring about the baby at all. Sometimes, they would sit together in the empty school room tossing around ideas for their future, and Race would sit with his hand on Fiona’s belly, his eyes brimming with wonder at the life growing inside of her.

Then, other times, he would moodily sit next to Fiona as she discussed how they could afford a crib and where they might place it, if they were able to gather up enough for the apartment near Jack and Hannah’s, of course.

When she’d bring up baby names, he’d either melt and animatedly suggest some of his favorites: Maria for a girl, Joseph or Tommy for a boy. Or, he’d swiftly change the subject, chewing on his bottom lip with fervor.

Today, though, he was the attentive Race, the one who couldn’t let Fiona so much as step on a crack in the pavement without worrying about how it might affect the baby.

He poured himself a glass of lemonade that the pair had gingerly transported uptown (with only a few minor spills) and laid down on the blanket, a blissful expression on his face.

“This time next week, we’ll be married,” he smiled lazily, turning his face toward the sun. “Who would’ve thought that when we first met?”

“Everybody?” Fiona laughed, picturing them as the children they were when they were first introduced.

Their lives were like two ships in a violent storm, and the pair clung to each other to keep afloat. The one thing in their lives that didn’t seem to change: their constant devotion to one another, their anchors at sea.

“I didn’t think I liked girls yet when I first met you,” he smiled, wiping the sweat that accumulated over his brow, the tune of an organ grinder and children giggling at his monkey’s tricks in the background. “But I liked your hair a lot. Sounds weird, don’t it?”

Fiona shook her head.

“Naw,” she ran her hand through his hair, slick with pomade. “I liked your crooked smile.”

Race sat up and put his lemonade down beside him, brushing a strand of Fiona’s hair out of her face. He put his nose to hers, not paying attention to the fact that her face had turned deeply red from the public affection. It was one thing to act this way at the Lodging House or at Tibby’s, but it was entirely different surrounded by middle-class families. Those whom her mother did the sewing and laundry and polished dishes for, those who looked down their noses at people like Fiona and Race.

But he kissed her full on the lips anyway, his body suddenly overtaken with desire as he pulled her closer.

“I can’t wait to be alone with you,” he whispered in her ear. “Like really alone. Not in the school room, not behind Tibby’s, not in a hotel room for a night. But forever. Me and you.”

Fiona grinned, kissing him back and trying to ignore the scandalized look of the middle-aged woman in widow’s mourning attire sitting on the bench near their encampment. Her dog let out a bark, but she hushed it with a piece of sausage roll she’d purchased from one of the vendors.

“Me too,” Fiona nodded, her hands finding their way to the waistband of his trousers. “It ain’t enough being alone for a few hours, is it?”

He shook his head and kissed her neck, making her body tingle.

“You think we’ll miss it though?” she asked, in almost a whisper.

“Miss what?” he replied, his hand snaking its way up her back.

“The girls. The boys. The noise. Everything going on at once,” she mused.

It was little moments in the mornings and the evenings she worried she’d wish she had more of. The late-night chats with Katarina. Helping the younger girls brush their hair. The open window on a summer’s night and the sighs of the girls in their sleep as they rolled over, their bodies slick with sweat.

“No way,” he grinned, even though his heart sank a little thinking of the playful pushes with the boys, the card games and even the whispered arguments over stolen cigars and pennies. “I’m going to have you all to myself. And, on hot Sundays like this, we can spend all day in bed. Naked. And it won’t even mattah ‘cause you’ll be my wife.”

Fiona felt her face flush again at the word, “naked.”

But the few times she’d stripped down completely in front of Race, it felt like the most natural thing in the world. The way Race looked at her bare body with his big brown eyes and sly grin made her feel like she’d imagine a queen felt: beautiful and powerful. Even desirable.

And she was ashamed to admit even to Katarina that she not only liked the feeling, but craved Race’s touch. Sometimes, it was all she could think when they were apart, and it took everything in her being not to tell him to have his way with her one more time.

Instead, she worked on being subdued, telling the girls she only gave into Race after he’d begged her for it for days at a time. It was what all of the girls said, if they let their boyfriends touch them at all, which is what convinced Fiona that there was something unnatural about her strong desires for him. She even tried to mask it from Race when they were alone, but it steadily became more challenging, until it was impossible.

“I like that you’re like this,” Race told her one evening after they had snuck behind the Lodging House for him to pin her to the wall, his hands traveling all over her.  Heat emanating from her chest making its way to the tips of her fingers as she felt his fingers making their way up her skirt and to her open drawer bloomers. Her only wish was that they could be skin to skin, and she gasped in embarrassed delight when he rubbed his finger over the opening in the underwear. “It means I’m one lucky guy…and married life is only going to make things better.”

Race kept his arms around Fiona’s waist for a few minutes before letting go, the heat of the late spring day edging in on them so that keeping up the embrace was more effort, and much hotter, than it was worth. Fiona felt the familiar sensation of wanting to pull him closer, so she scooted away from him, shame rising up from stomach as she thought of the Bible verses her mother used to share with her about staying pure and pious.

The pair fanned themselves as the scandalized widow threw bits of sausage roll for her dog to fetch. Race sighed.

“I’m sorry, Fi,” he said, fingering the cigar that he always had in his pocket. This one was a brand new one, never been lit. Fi could tell he was saving it for something, or else he’d have started chewing on the end of it.

“For what?” she asked, unpacking the picnic basket and placing the chicken sandwiches she’d packed on the cheap Lodging House china.

Fiona peeled off the gloves Race had won her in a poker match. She’d wanted to sell them, knowing they were far too precious for someone like her to wear. But Race shook his head.

“You’ll wear ‘em Sundays and look like the rest of ‘em fancy ladies.”

So she did, pretending the two of them were more important than a pair of dirt poor immigrant kids looking for their next penny.

“That I ain’t got the money to get ya that house I promised. With the tub with the claw feet, and the separate room for the babies,” he answered, biting into the sandwich. It was his turn for the shame to rise from his own stomach as he thought about all of his money that had changed hands in his quest to try and win Fiona the life she deserved.

“Race, I never really thought you were getting us a house like that,” she answered as soon as she had swallowed her bite. “It was only a fantasy. I know that.”

“It ain’t though,” he shook his head. “You deserve it. Hell, you deserve a diamond necklace from Tiffany’s.”

Fiona, laughed, not realizing he was gravely serious.

“And you deserve a gold pocket watch,” she answered. “But what you deserve and what you can have ain’t the same thing. You think someone like Pulitzer deserves all that stuff he’s got more than we do?”

“You sound like Jack,” Race answered shaking his head.

He stretched out on the blanket, propping himself up with his right arm as he polished off the sandwich with his left. Once he licked his fingers clean, he put his hand on Fiona’s stomach.

“Don’t put your hand there,” she hissed, her face even more shame-filled than when she thought about how much she wanted Race to touch her.

“Why not? Our baby’s in there,” he replied, opening his hand and then molding it to the curve of her corset.

“’Cause they’ll think I’m…you know,” she reddened.

When her mother was pregnant with Aine, she had tried not to leave the house in the last couple of months, trying to conceal the shame of a child inside of her.

“Who do you think you are? You t’ink youse t’e Queen a Sheba?” her dad had taunted her mother. “It aint’ like when you was pregnant with Fiona and ya had your parents to go get things so people didn’t know you was up the duff. But here, you ain’t got nobody ‘cept us, and the groceries don’t get to the table by themselves.”

The words rang in her ears as she watched her mother put on her ripped tweed wool coat on a blustery day, that was definitely nowhere cold enough for what she was wearing, attempting to conceal the bump underneath it.

“But you are,” Race laughed, pulling her back to reality.

“You don’t understand,” Fiona shook her head, lying back with him and crossing her ankles. Her thighs were melting beneath her petticoat and stockings, but if she angled it correctly, she could get a little bit of breeze up her skirt without showing off too much.

“Guess I don’t,” he shrugged, not moving his hand, instead rubbing it over her stomach. “What’s it feel like?”

She shrugged.

“I dunno. Like, I’m hot and my breasts hurt and I feel a little bit like I’m about to throw up all of the time,” she smirked. “But it does make me excited.”

Race resisted the urge to kiss her belly, knowing that when they were finally alone in their apartment, he’d be able to watch it grow, unfettered, and give it all the kisses he wanted.

“Me too,” he grinned. “I want there to be something that only belongs to us. Something that’s only ours. And this kid’s it.”

She smiled and he kissed her on the lips, before splaying out next to her on the blanket, succumbing to the unusually hot spring sun.

With Fiona by his side, his belly full, and the sunshine in his face, he couldn’t help but feel contented. Hopeful even.

And in that moment, he was confident things would work out the way they were supposed to. But the moment, Race discovered, was fleeting.

At the end of their sun-drenched day, the pair made their way back to the Lodging House, Fiona’s white skin now pinkened with sun, the freckles on Race’s nose becoming even more prominent than they had been just the day before. Fiona resisted the urge to kiss every single one of them until they were back home, away from the public, and planted several kisses on the bridge of his nose before the pair collapsed into giggles.

After they said goodnight to one another, Race settled in his bunk, the familiar sounds of sighs and whimpers of over 30 boys and little men settling into their beds for the night. The sun had made him almost drunk, and he nod off more quickly than usual. Most evenings, he spent thinking about gambling strategies, tips he’d heard on horses, rehearsing how to throw dice a specific way for the next time, or seeing Fiona fully naked again. Sometimes other women would make their way into his fantasy, but she was the one that appeared most often.

In his fantasy, she always had her hair down, her pink nipples bare and standing erect, biting her lip in what he assumed to be half embarrassment, half desire.

But that night, as he fell asleep, the world didn’t seem calm. His chest felt tight, and he kept having to clear his throat to get some air. The next morning, Skittery would inform him that it was literally the most annoying sound on earth and to please never make it again.

When he finally fell into the dream, he was back in Central Park with Fiona again, his hand on the slight curve of her stomach, the air sweet with the smell chestnuts.

The pair kissed again, but Fiona pulled away from it, her hands grasping at his lapels. Her green eyes were wild and wide.

“It’s coming!” she yelled.

Race looked down and saw that she was no longer not showing, but very obviously pregnant. When he sat up so that he could get a grip on her and attempt to carry her somewhere, he saw that the entire back of her skirt was covered in blood.

“Hurry up!” she panted.

As he gathered her in his arms, the pair made their way into what appeared to be the hospital room at the orphanage Race had lived in as a child. The room he had suffered through scarlet fever in, where he had learned he would never see his best friend again.

Fiona lay on one of the beds, huffing and puffing, her brow drenched in sweat, her hair in her face. Katarina would periodically move it from her forehead, encouraging her to keep pushing.

“I can’t!” Fiona yelled out.

It was as if then was the first time anyone noticed Race had been standing there.

“Get him out!” Katarina called. “He can’t be in here.” 

“Race?” Fiona’s voice called out, thin and getting thinner. 

“I’m right here,” he called back, but someone was pushing him by the waist toward the doorframe. “Let me hold her hand.” 

He pushed himself forward, toward Fiona, but she seemed to be shrinking, and the hands around his waist were too strong.

“Is she breathing?” a voice yelled.

“No,” Katarina called back. The sound of her hand slapping Fiona’s face rang out as she said her best friend’s name over and over. 

“And the baby?” the same disembodied voice asked.

“They’re both gone,” a third answered.

It was then Race was finally able to push his way from the grip of the person that had been attempting to push him out the door. 

Fiona’s body was lifeless, her cheek covered in blood from where Katarina had tried to slap her awake. The bed looked like it had been painted red with her blood, and the baby, purple and bloated, was in the middle of it, lying still between Fiona’s legs.

Katarina hid her face as she began to sob into her hands. 

But a primal wail came over Race as he dropped to his knees, yelling out Fiona’s name into the ether. He felt a strong hand on his shoulder, attempting to comfort him.

As he began to eschew his sleep, he realized the hand belonged to Skittery, who was trying to shake him awake.

“You aight?” Skittery asked.

As Race finally opened his eyes, he saw that he was back in the Lodging House. Relief washed over him as he saw the rest of the boys around him, still sleeping. Most of them were used to these types of outbursts and had learned to sleep through them. Snipeshooter, who slept next to Race, opened one eye and then turned over. 

“Yeah,” Race whispered. “I think.”

“You think?”

“Is Fi aight?”

Skittery rubbed his eyes.

“I ain’t heard anything from her so I suppose.”

Race smiled and turned over, attempting to give himself to sleep.

But was in that moment he realized why he was more terrified than excited about Fiona having a baby: the prospect that he would go from finally having a family to having nothing at all.


	9. Race's Mission

**1901--Later That Morning**

Just as the sun broke through the buildings of the Lower East Side, Race snuck out of the boys’ dormitory.

There were strict rules in place to keep the girls out of the boys’ dorm and the boys out of the girls’ dorm, mostly to prevent situations like Jack and Hannah’s and Race and Fiona’s. Obviously, dormitory rules weren’t able to prevent teenage lust, proving the old adage that where there’s a will, there’s a way. 

Getting caught sneaking into the dorm when you weren’t supposed to be there could catch you fines, or getting kicked out for the night. Repeat offenders were tossed out entirely, but that had only happened once the entire time Racetrack and Fiona had lived there.

A boy who went by the name of Apple Joe seemed to turn up in the girls’ room unannounced two to three times a week. He was eventually kicked out, and Kid Blink whispered to Race he suspected he had a connection with one of the brothels in town and was looking for girls to work. 

Since then, it had only been pairs of teenaged lovers that had been caught in the wrong dormitory, each getting a stern talking to about their actions. Race and Fiona had both risked it a couple of times, but tried to keep their meetings in neutral territory, like the schoolroom. 

But that morning, Race needed to get up there, fine be damned. The pair would be out of there in the next couple of weeks anyway, so what else could they really do to him?

He tiptoed up the stairs, slowly turning the knob of the girls’ bunk. He knew Fiona slept on a bunk that faced the wall, on the bottom, and his brown eyes scanned the room. He needed to be in and out of there as quickly as possible—and without making a scene.

He skated his way through the sighs of girls still dreaming, the sound of girls grinding their teeth and one girl muttering something in Spanish. While the boys’ room smelled nicer, Race was surprised to learn that the girls weren’t that much quieter in their sleep. He shook his head at his past self, hoping he’d be a father to a girl so that he and Fiona would have some peace at the beginning of their marriage.

When he finally saw Fiona, she was laying flat on her back, her long blonde hair in a loose braid. And when he noticed that he could see her nipples through the thin white nightgown she was wearing if he looked close enough, he tried to inhale to avoid getting hard. 

‘I ain’t here for that,’ he told himself and shook his head.

He slowly let Fiona’s bed take his weight, the springs squeaking underneath him.

He ran his hand through her hair and kissed her forehead, before whispering in her ear.

“Hey, it’s just me. Wake up.”

She stirred for a minute before lazily opening her eyes.

“Race? You ain’t supposed to be here.”

He put his finger to his lips and grinned. 

“I know. I just came to check on you and the baby,” he told her, running his hand over her belly. He swore that the curve was even more pronounced than yesterday.

“We’re fine. You’d see me in a couple of hours anyway,” she shook her head. “You should go, before you get in trouble.”

“Fi, if you don’t feel well, come back here, okay? If it gets too hot or you feel sick?” 

Fiona nodded, trying to give in to the last few precious hours of sleep. 

“Fi?”

“What?”

“You promise?”

“Yeah,” she nodded. “I do.”

“Good.”

He smiled and kissed her on the lips. He then bent down and kissed her belly, which made her giggle a little bit.

“Get out of here,” she laughed as she rolled and snuggled back under the sheet.

Race stood there watching her sleep for a moment, halfway convinced that blood was going to come gushing through the thin sheet covering her. When it didn’t, he nodded and told himself to be rational.

He scanned the bunks again, this time looking for Katarina. He had no idea where she slept, so this was even more of a challenge. He looked at the bunks closest to Fiona and couldn’t find her, so he spread out a little further until he found the familiar upturned nose and thick brown braid he’d known since he was a little boy.

As quietly as he could, he bent down to shake his friend.

“What?” Katarina almost yelled, squinting at the sun that was now pouring into the room. She closed one eye as she looked Race up and down with the open one.

Race put his finger to his lips, this time without smiling.

“I need to talk to you,” he whispered.

“Fiona lets you kiss her with that dragon breath?” she asked shirking back into her bunk.

“C’mon, it’s serious,” he responded.

She sighed and then sat up.

“Okay...” she nodded, fishing around her bunk for her robe.

Race stood nervously shuffling as she fumbled in her meagre belongings for her.

“And no, my nightgown isn’t as thin as Fiona’s is, so you can put ya eyes back in ya head,” she rolled her eyes at him, pushing her arms through her light blue, but stained robe.

“I weren’t lookin,” Race shook his head.

This time he was actually telling the truth. Not that he had the urge to cheat on Fiona, it was just that he appreciated the female form, even if it did sometimes take the shape of some of his good friends or a dancer in Meddah’s show or his friends’ girlfriends and wives.

But now wasn’t the time to be wondering how thin Katarina’s nightgown was, he had other business on his mind. 

The pair stepped out of the girls’ dormitory, Katarina’s hair wispy and out of place. She yawned and covered her mouth, which made Race yawn in turn.

“Well?” she asked.

“Does Fi seem okay to you?” he asked.

“Don’t tell me ya got into a fight. If ya did, you gotta handle it on ya own now. I’m out,” she turned on her heel, making her way back to the entrance to the dormitory, but Race pulled her back by the forearm.

“No, it ain’t like that,” he shook his head. “Like, does she seem okay to you in her health? Is she eatin’ okay?”

“I guess,” Katarina shrugged. “You worried about the baby?”

Race nodded, biting his lip.

“Didn’t ya say your mom died givin’ birth to your sister?” 

Katarina nodded, rubbing her bare foot on her shin.

“Yeah. Did you wake me up just ta remind me of it?”

Race shook his head.

“Naw I’m wonderin’ if there was somethin’ you coulda done to make it, ya know, not have happened. If you was richer, could you have saved her?”

“I dunno, Race,” Katarina looked down at her hands. “What’s this about?”

A hot summer morning breeze blew between the two as Race ran his fingers through his hair. 

“My dad died ‘cause he didn’t have enough money for a doctor,” Race replied.

“You said,” she nodded. “When we first met. I remember.”

Race shook his head, moving closer to his friend, 

“So if your mom had the money, do you think a doctor coulda saved her?” 

Katarina shrugged.

“Maybe. I dunno. Rich people have a doctor look at their babies while they wives is up the duff. And they sometimes have a doctor there when the mom has the baby.”

 He looked straight in Katarina’s eyes.

“What are the odds that Fiona’s gonna die when she has this kid?”

Katarina closed her eyes for a moment, and then opened them slowly.

“You really playing odds on your fiancee’s life?”

“I’m a gambling man, it’s what I know.”

Katarina chewed on her bottom lip, the memory of the worst day of her life flashing in front of her once again.

“I dunno. But I say the odds is better if she got a doctor before. I can’t say for positive. You know how me sister and me worked in that fancy lady’s house before we was newsies? She had a lot of doctors come in and she still didn’t make it…”

“Shit,” Race put his head in his hands. “I’m gonna lose her." 

Katarina sat up right. 

“Don’t talk like that. Nobody’s losin’ anybody. Lotsa people have babies and they’se just fine. Look at Mrs. Gellman in the apartment block next door. She’s got, what? 12 kids? She still alive, screamin’ for us all to be quiet in the mornings and at dinner!”

Race let out a laugh.

“But if I had more money, it would be more of a sure thing?" 

“If any of us had more money everything would be more of a sure thing. But nothing’s a done deal, aight?” 

He nodded. 

“Don’t do somethin’ stupid,” Katarina shook her head at Race. “We’ll take good care of Fi, like we did with Hannah, aight? Hannah’s fine, Fi’ll be fine.” 

“Hannah wasn’t fine,” Race muttered under his breath. 

“You ain’t talkin’ about what could happen after. No one can predict if that’s gonna happen to Fi.”

Race nodded.

“Thanks,” he gave Katarina a weak smile and opened his arms to her. The pair embraced, even though Katarina was now a full head taller than Race.

“We’se family ‘round here,” she smiled spitting into her hand.

Race smirked and spit into his, rubbing his hand with one of his best friends’. Katarina had always made Race laugh with how easily she was willing to forego the trappings of femininity.

Unlike most of the other girls in the Lodging House who still had a sense of being a young lady in them instilled by their long gone parents or the nuns who raised them, Katarina couldn’t care less if people thought she was ladylike. Race had liked that at first when they were children, how she was the only girl in the Lodging House to accompany him to the races, that she would make slingshots with him and aim spit balls at random middle class people going about their daily lives.

But he was also secretly glad he wasn’t marrying someone so rough around the edges, and sometimes caught himself hoping she didn’t rub off on Fiona. He knew it totally unfair to like it in some women, but not the woman he wanted to be with, but he couldn’t help it. He liked a lady who preferred ribbons and silk to spitballs and slingshots.

“If you don’t mind, I’m going to try to get the rest of me beauty sleep,” she nodded.

“Aight,” Race nodded back and made his way back to the boys’ section of the Lodging House, where only Boots had woken up. 

Boots was sitting on the edge of his bed, quietly snapping out a tune and rubbing his eyes. He waved to Race as he entered the bunkhouse, and then retreated back into his own world.

Fumbling with the nightstand next to him, Race went to the back of the drawer, where he kept the key to his chest, the nondescript wooden box that each boy had and held some of their most precious possessions.

And in the chest were his most sacred items: his money, the pictures of his parents and brother, his pocket watch, and the thin, basic wedding rings Jack had helped him purchase just a couple of weeks ago. 

Race, pushed the key into the lock, hoping the wooden chest didn’t squeak too loudly, as he quietly found the little pouch the rings sat in. Wordlessly, he tipped the rings into his ink-stained hand: a plain thin gold band for him and a gold band with a diamond so small one could barely see it for Fiona. 

He slipped the rings in his pocket and locked the chest.

“Skitts?”

“What?” Skittery moaned. “Again, Race?” 

“Shut up,” Race hit his best friend on the back of the head, half jokingly, half serious. “I ain’t gonna go sellin’ today. Tell Fi, aight? So you’ll have to find yourself a new partner.”

“Wedding stuff?” Skittery asked, blinking his eyes flirtatiously at Race.

“Somethin’ like that,” Race nodded.

“Aight. I’ll tell Fi you’re getting a surprise for her. I mean, nothin’ like what you ain’t already gave her,” he smirked, making a belly with his hand 

“Shut up,” Race genuinely laughed at his friend’s vulgar comment as he pulled on his suspenders and reached for his flatcap. “I’ll see you tonight.”

Skittery nodded and Race made his way downstairs into the new day with one thing on his mind: to ensure he never lost the family he was about to have.

 

 


End file.
